L I B RARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY
Of ILLINOIS
9772
1*2
v. 15,
cop. ^r
bum Hisaaui ana
M Education and Reform at
NEW HARMONY
* * *
Correspondence of WILLIAM MACLURE
and MARIE DUCLOS FRETAGEOT
1820-1833
Edited by
ARTHUR E. BESTOR, Jr.
INDIANAPOLIS
INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
1948
THE LIBRARY OF THE
SEP 21 1534
UNIVERSITY OE IUIN01S
The price of this Publication is One Dollar.
Members of the Indiana Historical Society are entitled to
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INDIANA
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
PUBLICATIONS
VOLUME 15
NUMBER 3
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
http://archive.org/details/educationreforma153macl
Education and Reform at
NEW HARMONY
* * *
Correspondence of WILLIAM MACLURE
and MARIE DUCLOS FRETAGEOT
1820-1833
Edited by
ARTHUR E. BESTOR, Jr.
INDIANAPOLIS
INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
1948
Copyright, 1948,
by the
Indiana Historical Society
PREFACE
The Workingmen's Institute at New Harmony, founded in
1838, is a still living product of the social and educational
enthusiasm that stirred the little Indiana community in the
second quarter of the nineteenth century. Though its founder,
William Maclure, was somewhat contemptuous of history — "I
see nothing worth the trouble," he once wrote, "in searching for
antiquities, and studying the learned disquisitions of anti-
quarians"1— the Institute has wisely disregarded his views and
over the years has gathered and preserved the historical record
of the various movements that centered at New Harmony and
radiated their influence throughout the Old Northwest.
From many points of view the heart of its extensive manu-
script collection is the correspondence between William Maclure
and Marie D. Fretageot. Maclure was the principal associate
of Robert Owen in the social and educational experiment of the
middle 1820's, and was himself the prime mover in making the
community by the Wabash the greatest center in its day of
scientific research and publication in the West. The letters
that passed between him and his trusted adviser and deputy,
Madame Fretageot, over a period of nearly fifteen years
constitute the only continuous contemporary record of the
genesis, culmination, and dissolution of Owen's social experi-
ment and of the steadier advance of the scientific and educa-
tional programs connected with it.
Though utilized in two recent biographies of individuals
associated with New Harmony,2 the Maclure-Fretageot cor-
1 William Maclure, Opinions on Various Subjects, Dedicated to the
Industrious Producers (3 volumes, New Harmony, 1831-38), I, 229. For
a bibliographical discussion of this work see pp. 407-8, n. 11, below.
2 Richard William Leopold, Robert Dale Owen: A Biography (Har-
vard Historical Studies, XLV, Cambridge, 1940) ; and Harry B. Weiss and
Grace M. Ziegler, Thomas Say, Early American Naturalist (Springfield,
111., 1931). One document that has not yet come to light is a diary of
William Maclure for 1824, quoted by Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A
(285)
286 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
respondence has not received the attention it deserves from
historians of the Owenite movement. One explanation, perhaps,
is the handwriting. Maclure once chided Madame Fretageot
for not carrying out fully the instructions in his letters, then
added, "perhaps they are so scrawled you cannot have time to
read them."3 One who looks at the manuscripts today can only
admire the devotion that inspired her to decipher them at
all. I have tried to produce a faithful transcription, with the
aid of such amateur cryptographers as I could enlist. I would
be bold indeed to claim, however, that a few characters may
not have been misread. And candor requires me to admit that
two or three of my marks of ellipsis indicate passages that
baffled me to the end.
Unfortunately Maclure's spelling is almost as bad as his
chirography. One is tempted to add that his punctuation is
worse than either, but the simple truth is that punctuation is
entirely absent. To transpose his letters into type, character
for character, is to advance them only half way toward intel-
ligibility. Without altering his phraseology in any manner, I
have added necessary punctuation (including apostrophes and,
in rare instances, parentheses), capitalized the first letter of
sentences and of proper names, italicized titles and foreign
phrases, and divided the text into paragraphs. To help the
reader through Maclure's vagrant spellings (reproduced literally
in all cases), I have occasionally added the correct word in
brackets, notably in the case of famil, which any reader might
be pardoned for not recognizing as female. The customary
three dots have been used to indicate every omission from the
actual text or postscript of a letter, but have not been used when
a purely formal element, such as date line or salutation, has been
eliminated, or an unintentionally duplicated word excised.
This editorial treatment is intended to increase the compre-
hensibility, not to "improve" the style, of the two writers. No
one, I think, can miss the fact that Maclure, despite his classical
Biography (2 volumes, London, 1906), I, 299, with the notation that it was
at that time "preserved in the New Harmony Public Library."
3 See his letter of 11 Aug. 1826, below.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 287
education, lacked a sure command of sentence structure. Nor
can one fail to note Madame Fretageot's unsuccessful, but
frequently charming, struggles with English idiom.
The information needed for a complete understanding of
the present letters I have tried to weave into a continuous
narrative. The source of every additional quotation has been
indicated, but otherwise footnotes have been eschewed wherever
possible. In discussing the financial and legal relations between
Maclure and Owen, I have permitted myself the only major
exception to this rule. Upon these matters the present cor-
respondence sheds so much new light that a re-examination
of all the existing evidence seems warranted.
I am grateful to the Workingmen's Institute of New
Harmony for permission to publish the letters here presented,
and to its librarian, Mrs. Margie Immenga, for kindnesses
shown me in the course of my work there. The editing was
begun while I held a Newberry Fellowship at the Newberry
Library in Chicago, to whose librarian and staff I am deeply
indebted for assistance and encouragement. The work was
completed while I was a member of the faculty of the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin, where I was privileged to use the
combined resources of its library and the collections of the
Wisconsin Historical Society. For many helpful suggestions
I am indebted to the staff of the Indiana Historical Society, and
in particular to Miss Gayle Thornbrough, who saw the volume
through the press and prepared the index.
Of all my obligations, the greatest is to Miss Livia Appel,
editor of the University of Wisconsin Press. Though this
publication was in no way an official responsibility of hers, she
generously read and criticized the manuscript at every stage of
its progress, bringing to bear upon it her profound sense of
over-all structure and her meticulous care for matters of literary
and scholarly form.
Arthur Eugene Bestor, Jr.
University of Illinois
CONTENTS
PAGE
T. William Maclure and the New Harmony
Experiment 291
II. Maclure and Owen Join Forces. 1820-1825. . . 300
III. The New Harmony Kaleidoscope. January-
September 1826 326
IV. Owen and Maclure Reach an Open Break.
October 1826 — May 1827 373
V. Epilogue 398
Index 409
(289)
I. WILLIAM MACLURE AND THE NEW HARMONY
EXPERIMENT
The community at New Harmony that Robert Owen
founded in 1825 was not simply an experimental application
of novel social and economic theories. It was a highly complex
movement, representing the convergence of at least three dis-
tinct currents of thought, social, educational, and scientific.
Uppermost in the public mind, of course, was the doctrine
of social reform that Owen had been preaching in England
for about a decade, a doctrine that envisaged the reconstitution
of society on the basis of autonomous co-operative communities,
comprising one or two thousand members apiece, who should
produce collectively the various goods and services they
required. In one of its aspects the New Harmony experiment
was an attempt to establish such a community, as a working
model of what Owen termed "A New View of Society.',
Underlying this doctrine, however, and even more deeply
rooted in the past, was an educational theory whose distinctive
contribution to the New Harmony enterprise — and to social
reform in general — has not been given sufficient attention. As
a matter of fact, the four essays that Owen published in 18 13
and 18 14 under the title A New View of Society; or, Essays
on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character
were, at bottom, educational treatises. What Owen sought to
advance was the education of the masses, unprovided for by
the conventional schools of the day. For this purpose he
devised or adapted new institutions, especially infant schools
and agencies for the continuing education of employed adults.
And he emphasized the kinds of training that would fit men
and women for practical life. A better and happier social
order was the ultimate end he had in view. But as his thinking
progressed, he found it impossible to keep ends entirely
divorced from means. Education might be the best instrument
for the creation of a new social order, but in the meantime
(291)
292 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
society itself was one of the most potent of educational forces,
and Owen came increasingly to feel that the malevolent
influence of unreformed social institutions was bound to thwart
the most enlightened educational scheme. It was the logic of
his educational doctrine, in the last analysis, that made him
a social reformer.
In its educational aspect, however, the New Harmony
experiment embodied ideas of others than Owen himself. The
pedagogical theories he professed were, in fact, part of the
climate of advanced educational opinion in the early nineteenth
century. Heinrich Pestalozzi and Philipp Emmanuel von
Fellenberg were the great apostles, and many contemporary
visitors linked their schools at Yverdon and Hofwyl with
Owen's at New Lanark. While Pestalozzi and Fellenberg did
not themselves push the social implications of their theories
to the extreme conclusion that Owen reached, many of their
followers went fully as far as he. In the 1840's James
Pierrepont Greaves in England and Bronson Alcott in America
were to go through an intellectual development analogous to
Owen's, beginning as educational reformers and emerging as
advocates of full-fledged social reorganization. But even
earlier, in the generation strictly contemporary with Owen, the
doctrines of Pestalozzi and Fellenberg were producing a
ferment of social ideas in minds that came under their influence.
Notable among these was William Maclure, through whom the
ideological stream that had its source in Pestalozzi and Fellen-
berg flowed most directly into the New Harmony enterprise.
William Maclure, born in Scotland in 1763, was eight years
older than Owen, and like him had accumulated a fortune by
his own efforts. Just before the close of the eighteenth
century he moved to Philadelphia, became an American
citizen, and then, before the age of forty, retired from
mercantile life to devote himself to science and education
and, through them, to social reform. These three interests
reinforced one another. A classical education such as he had
received appeared to him futile when he discovered how little
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 293
it had contributed to his own scientific research; it appeared
worse than futile when he considered how little it could ever
contribute to the advancement of the laboring classes. A visit
to the school of Pestalozzi at Yverdon in Switzerland in
1805 opened his eyes to the possibility of a useful education
for the masses of the people — an education that might be made
economically available to all by combining it with the pursuit
of practical occupations, and that might contribute to the rapid
advancement of the kind of knowledge he valued by emphasiz-
ing the natural sciences. In a letter of 1822 to Benjamin
Silliman, apropos of the latter's efforts to advance the
natural sciences at Yale, Maclure succinctly stated his own
educational philosophy :
'Your ideas concerning the utility that would result to
mankind by a more strict attention to positive knowledge in
our Colleges, agree perfectly with my own. . . . When I
retired from commerce about twenty-five years ago, I looked
round for some occupation that might amuse me always,
convinced that a man had the choice of his amusements as
well as of his profession, and that common sense dictated
an amusement that would produce the greatest good. ... I
adopted rock-hunting as an amusement in place of deer or
partridge hunting, considering mineralogy and geology as the
sciences most applicable to useful practical purposes. . . .
"In reflecting upon the absurdity of my own classical
education, launched into the world as ignorant as a pig of
anything useful, not having occasion to practice anything I had
learned, except reading, writing, and counting, which any
child could now acquire in six or eight months ... I had
been long in the habit of considering education one of the
greatest abuses our species were guilty of, and of course one
of the reforms the most beneficial to humanity. . . . Almost
no improvement had been made in it for two hundred or three
hundred years; there was immense room for change to put it
on a par with the other functions of civilization. . . .
"I have been endeavoring, for some twenty years, to change
the education of children, and stumbled by accident about
294 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
eighteen years ago on the school of Pestalozzi in Switzerland,
which subserved the useful purposes that I had formed to
myself of a rational education. I have been ever since doing
something towards propagating and improving the scheme, and
the success in the fruits are more than I expected. ... I have
little doubt that in time some such system will generally prevail
in our country, where the power, being in the hands of the
people, through the medium of our popular governments,
renders a diffusion of knowledge necessary to the support of
freedom. . . . You will perceive the consequence I attach to
an almost equal division of property, knowledge, and power, as
the only firm foundation of freedom which includes the
happiness of mankind. . . . The reform in the common
schools is the only mode of equalizing knowledge. Not one
in a thousand in any country can have a college education, and
when once the schools are modelled upon the forms of utility
the colleges must follow, or none will attend them. That
knowledge can be obtained in a twentieth part of the time that is
wasted by the ancient, monkish system, there can be no doubt."1
The practical efforts to which Maclure refers began im-
mediately after his original acquaintance with Pestalozzian
principles. Determined to establish a school on the same plan
in America, he brought one of Pestalozzi's co-workers, Joseph
Neef, to Philadelphia in 1806, and guaranteed him an income
of five hundred dollars a year for three years while he learned
the language, set up his school, and prepared a Sketch of a Plan
and Method of Education, which was published in Philadelphia
in 1808. Geological studies and expeditions occupied Maclure
for the next decade, but by 181 9 he was back in Europe estab-
lishing an industrial and agricultural school in Spain, where the
rising tide of liberalism promised success for such an enterprise.
During these years in Europe, Maclure also interested himself
in two Pestalozzian teachers in Paris, Madame Marie Duclos
1 William Maclure to Benjamin Silliman, 19 October 1822, in George P.
Fisher, Life of Benjamin Silliman (2 volumes, New York, 1866), II, 41-43.
I am responsible for the paragraphing, and also for moving the third quoted
sentence up from a later position in the letter.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 295
Fretageot and Guillaunie Sylvan Casimir Phiquepal d'Arus-
mont,2 and he provided the means that enabled both of them
to transfer their activities to Philadelphia, in 182 1 and 1824
respectively. In 1823, however, reaction had triumphed in
Spain, and Maclure was forced to abandon his own plans and
leave the country. At the very moment he arrived in
Kngland, Robert Owen was planning his social experiment in
America. Maclure's interest was aroused, but it was a moderate
interest compared with the excitement generated among his
friends in Philadelphia by the Owenite gospel. In the end
their enthusiasm prevailed, and Maclure decided to join forces
with Owen. Madame Fretageot and Phiquepal followed — per-
haps one should say led — Maclure to New Harmony in
January 1826, and Neef soon joined the group. Thus were
reunited in the new community the leading pioneers of
Pestalozzian education in America.
Maclure's interest in education was part and parcel of his
interest in the natural sciences. The third major aspect of the
New Harmony enterprise — its activity in scientific research
and publishing — was his contribution, owing virtually noth-
ing to Owen or Owenite ideas. As a matter of fact,
Maclure's thinking was far in advance of his own day, for his
conception of an institution that would combine teaching with
research and publication was not to be worked out fully in
America until the coming of the new university in the last
third of the nineteenth century. As a man of science in his
own right, Maclure had been active in the learned societies
and academies which, rather than the schools or colleges, were
in that day the principal agencies for the advancement of
knowledge. He envisaged a combination of these different
functions, and sought to realize his vision in the School of
Industry he founded at New Harmony. This was a secondary
2 The latter went by the name of William S. Phiquepal in America, and
resumed the family name d'Arusmont only after his return to France and
his marriage to Frances Wright in 1831. Madame Fretageot signed her
name with initials only, but Maclure used the anglicized form, Mary D.
Fretageot, in addressing his letters to her.
290 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
school, not a university, of course, but in its combination
of instruction, research, and publication it resembled a modern
institution of higher learning. Its teaching activities, particu-
larly after the establishment of the Workingmen's Institute
in 1838, included much that would today be called university
extension. Its scientific faculty were selected with research
in mind, and their investigations were encouraged and sub-
sidized. Finally, the press which the School maintained for
the publication of scientific works was in many respects a
forerunner of the modern university press.
Maclure's wide contact with other men of science guaranteed
the scholarly standing and importance of the venture. He had
established his own reputation securely through the publication,
in 1809, of his "Observations on the Geology of the United
States, Explanatory of a Geological Map," in the Transactions
of the American Philosophical Society, a paper that enjoyed
the unprecedented distinction of being republished in the very
next volume of the Transactions, with the corrections and
amplifications that eight more years of research had enabled
him to make.3 On the scientific expeditions that Maclure
undertook in this connection, he was accompanied by the
naturalists Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Thomas Say. More-
over, the presidency of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural
Sciences, which Maclure held from 18 17 until his death,
brought him into personal contact with such men as Dr. Gerard
Troost, the mineralogist, and into correspondence with such
leaders of scientific thought as Professor Benjamin Silliman
of Yale, founder and editor of the American Journal of Science
and Arts. Consequently when Maclure transferred his varied
activities to New Harmony, he was able to take Say, Lesueur,
Troost, and others with him, and to secure publicity in
Silliman's Journal for the new research center in the West.
3 American Philosophical Society, Transactions, VI (1809), 411-28; new
series, I (1818), 1-91; read respectively on 20 Jan. 1809 and 16 May 1817.
For a professional evaluation of Maclure's work, see Charles Keyes,
"William Maclure : Father of Modern Geology," in Pan-American Geologist,
XLIII, 81-94 (Sept. 1925).
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 297
In the long perspective of time Maclure's contribution to
New Harmony was more enduring than Robert Owen's. The
Xew Harmony Community as a social experiment faded out
in little more than two years, and in 1829 its organ, the
New-Harmony Gazette, was transferred to New York under
a new name. The School of Industry, however, existed many
years longer, its organ the Disseminator continued publication
until late in the 1830's, and its press was still issuing important
works in natural history in the 1840's. The impetus that
Maclure gave to science at New Harmony wras continued by
the son of his one-time colleague, David Dale Owen, who made
New Harmony the headquarters for the monumental series of
geological surveys that he conducted between 1837 and i860 for
various states and for the Federal government. And today the
strongest bond between New Harmony and its historic past is
the still active Workingmen's Institute, which Maclure estab-
lished as part of his plan for advancing the scientific and
practical education of adults.
Maclure's relationship to New Harmony is fully recorded
in his correspondence with Madame Fretageot. The letters
of both have been preserved in practically continuous sequence
from 1820 until her death in 1833. Though closely associated
in Maclure's various educational projects, the two correspond-
ents were actually in each other's company for only brief
periods of time. For this reason their letters include a wealth
of information that in other circumstances would have been
communicated by word of mouth.
The correspondence comprises approximately three hundred
and fifty complete letters and fragments of some sixty- five
others. From this total, fifty-two are printed here in whole
or in part, thirty-four written by Maclure and eighteen by
Madame Fretageot. So far as the New Harmony enterprise
is concerned, the letters fall naturally into three great chrono-
logical divisions, corresponding respectively to chapters II,
III-IV, and V of the present edition.
From 1820 to 1825 Maclure was in Europe and Madame
Fretageot (after 1821) in Philadelphia. Of the one hundred
298 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
and fifty-three letters from this period that are preserved at
New Harmony, twenty-three are printed or quoted in chapter
II. They reveal the growing influence of Owen upon the
thinking of the two educators and of the groups with which
they were associated. The impact of Owenism in America was
a complex thing, and these letters supplement in a significant
way such important published sources thereon as the diaries
of William Owen and Donald Macdonald, which recorded
Owen's triumphal journeys in America, and the Pears papers
and Pelham letters, which voiced the feelings of the persons
who gathered at New Harmony in 1825, the first year
of the experiment.4
Maclure was at New Harmony for only six of the fifteen
months that followed his arrival in January 1826, but Madame
Fretageot was in continuous residence. During his absences,
from June until October and from November until April, the
letters that passed between them dealt almost exclusively with
the affairs of New Harmony. This period was in many
respects the most critical in the history of the community.
During its first year there had been disappointment and dis-
content over Owen's absence, but hope had mounted with his
return in January 1826 for a continuous stay of a year and
a half, and had by no means entirely faded when Maclure took
his departure in June 1826. But by the following April, when
Maclure returned from his second extended trip, the disintegra-
tion of the New Harmony community was all but complete. For
these crucial months of frustration and defeat, existing
published sources are seriously defective. The diaries and
4 William Owen, Diary . . . from November 10, 1824, to April 20, 1825,
edited by Joel W. Hiatt (Indiana Historical Society Publications, IV, no. 1,
Indianapolis, 1906) ; Donald Macdonald, Diaries . . . 1824-1826, with an
introduction by Caroline Dale Snedeker (ibid., XIV, no. 2, 1942) ; Thomas
Clinton Pears, Jr. (ed.), New Harmony, An Adventure in Happiness:
Papers of Thomas and Sarah Pears (ibid., XI, no. 1, 1933), hereafter cited
as Pears Papers; William Pelham, "Letters . . . Written in 1825 and
1826," edited by Caroline Creese Pelham, in Harlow Lindley (ed.), Indiana
as Seen by Early Travelers (Indiana Historical Collections, [III], Indian-
apolis, 1916), pp. 360-417, hereafter cited as "Pelham Letters."
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 299
collections of correspondence previously mentioned had all
terminated before the end of April 1826; the New-Harmony
Gazette, being an official organ, ignored virtually every
disagreeable reality; and Paul Brown's Twelve Months in
New-Harmony (Cincinnati, 1827), though accurate in many
factual details, was the work of a dour fanatic to whom the
motives of all men but himself were suspect. The letters of
1826 and 1827 presented in chapters III and IV are thus of
prime importance, coming as they do from two persons who
were responsible leaders in the experiment, yet critical of its
progress. This portion of the collection is printed here with
substantial completeness, twenty-two of the twenty-seven extant
letters being included.
With the resumption of the correspondence in 1828 — after
Maclure's longest stay in New Harmony — the final chrono-
logical division begins, extending to Madame Fretageot's death
in 1833. So far as the New Harmony experiment is concerned,
this is a long-drawn-out epilogue, for the Owenite experiment
was over and most of the ideological issues and personal
conflicts had been resolved. From approximately one hundred
and seventy-five complete letters and sixty-five fragments
(many of them postscripts to Maclure's articles for the
Disseminator) six communications belonging to the winter of
1828-29 are excerpted in chapter V, and one fragment from
1830 is quoted in chapter IV. In these letters are pictured the
latter-day activities of the school at New Harmony and the
final meteoric passage of Robert Owen across the horizons
of his former colleagues.
II. MACLURE AND OWEN JOIN FORCES
1820-1825
Educational reform was a long-established interest of
William Maclure's in 1820, the year in which the cor-
respondence preserved in the Workingmen's Institute at New
Harmony begins. For at least a decade and a half he had been
acquainted with the work of Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, and it
was fourteen years since he had sent Joseph Neef to Phila-
delphia and financed him in establishing the first Pestalozzian
school in America. Latterly Maclure had been devoting most
of his energy and money to the agricultural school he was
initiating in Spain, but he had extended his interest and sup-
port as well to the Pestalozzian school of William S. Phique-
pal in Paris. It was perhaps through Phiquepal that he had
become acquainted with Madame M. D. Fretageot, for the
earliest letters between them discuss her plan for a girls' school
to be organized along lines similar to Phiquepal's.
Their correspondence had begun prior to 1820, for the
first letter in the collection, written by Maclure from Mar-
seilles on 24 January 1820, mentions a communication, now
lost, that he had just received from her. Yet their acquaintance
was so new that he had still much to tell her about his previous
activities and underlying convictions. The year 1820 was
spent by Maclure in travel, the high point of which was a
summer visit to Pestalozzi in Yverdon, Switzerland, where
he renewed an acquaintance that had begun there fifteen years
before. Of the five extant letters written by Maclure in 1820,
the most informative are two from Yverdon.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Yverdon, 22 May 1820
Your letter of the 12th May I received while at Geneva. I
have come into Switzerland because I find the climate in summer
more suitable to my system than at Paris and of course not for
the purpose of leaving my house to Mr. Phiquepal. The leaving
(300)
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 301
the house to Mr. Phiquepal was a second consideration arrising
out of the other, as I thought it might save him house rent and
perhaps be sufficiently large for as many children as he could
teach himself.
And after the experience that I have [had] I would not advise
him to have any professors or assistants, as they have constantly
injured and in some instances ruined the establishments according
to the Pestalozzian system, of which the institute here is a strik-
ing example, which has been more than once reduced to extremities
by the ambition and bad conduct of the professors and now is
carried on by having a number of poor boys educated expressly
as professors, and always a sufficient quantity to succeed those
that become discontented and leave the institute, which is at
present more flourishing than ever, having a good head (in a
Mr. Smith [Joseph Schmid] ) controlling and directing the whole.
They have fortunately got rid of all the priests whose intrigues
and diabolical machinations almost ruined the institute.
And Pestalozzi, who is now too old for active service, leaves
the whole arrangement to Mr. Smidth [sic], and his grandson un-
der the tutelage of Mr. Smidth. And the old man is now occupied
in publishing an edition of all his works on education, which is
printing in Germany supported by a large and general subscrip-
tion, at the head of which is the Emperor of Russia, the King
of Prussia &c.
From this 30 years I have considered ignorance as the cause
of all the miseries and errors of mankind and have used all my
endeavors to reduce the quantity of that truly diabolical evil.
My experience soon convinced me that it was impossible to give
any real information to men and that the only possible means of
giving usefull knowledge to the world was by the education of
children. About 15 years ago I stumbled upon the Pestalozzian
system, which appeared to me to be the best that I had seen for
the diffusion of usefull knowledge. I have therefore endeavoured
to introduce it into the United States of America as the place
I thought the most likely to succeed, and where I still think it will
spread in the course of time, tho perhaps not in my time. I once
thought it might spread even in France, protected by the division
of property and consequent division of knowledge, but in that
I fear I was premature. Altho the property is divided, the
knowledge is still monopolized and in the possession of that class
who have a direct and immediate interest in the propagation of
the most brutal ignorance.
I am, however, willing to assist any experiment that may be
made to show the few reflecting minds that may perhaps be in
302 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
France the utility of such a method. But I cannot flatter myself
that any logic of mine could possibly change the opinion of any
man in France in favor of the system. And consequently my
presence in Paris could not possibly be of any use to Mr. Phiquepal,
as I have never been able to change the opinions of any of my
servants in France respecting the most trif fling deviation from
their usual ro[u]tin[e]. When I first began, about 18 years
ago, to keep horses in France I wished to feed them on the im-
proved principles of all civilised countries that knows how to feed
horses, and therefore bought a straw cutter, but could never
perswade any of my coachmen to give my horses cut straw. People
that won't reason can't be convinced. They always agreed in
speaking that I was right, but in acting allways followed their
old rotin.
I rather think that Mr. Phiquepal will not, during his lifetime,
find a more favorable moment for trying his experiment than the
present, as it's more than probable every thing good will retrogade
in France for some time.
I remain yours sincerely
Wm Maclure . . .
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Yverdon, 13 June 1820
. . . As to America I used formerly to think that there was
much more common sense than in any part of Europe, but since
my last visit I have lost something of that favorable opinion, tho
I still think them more usefully rational. And should you think
it your interest to go there I shall aid you with all the recommenda-
tion or anything else in my power, tho I don't consider myself
competent to give you any usefull council, as prejudices are strong
there as well as in Europe. The changes that have lately taken
place in the Society of the United States will in my opinion be in
favor of reason and rationality. . . .
Unfavorable as the prospects of an educational revival in
America might be, the prospects in France appeared to Maclure
darker still, and he grew increasingly pessimistic as the year
wore on. On 9 July 1820 while still at Yverdon he wrote
Madame Fretageot that he had sent a complete set of Pestalozzi's
works to Phiquepal, only to have it turned back at the French
frontier. "Not a ray of light," he commented, "is permitted
to disturb the political and religious obscurity of the Royal
French Kingdom from without, and I fear that the internal
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 303
light is mere moonshine favorable to every species of intrigue
and chicane." As he crossed France on his return from
Switzerland, he reported to her, in a letter of 22 November
from Tours, that "there is a growth of ignorance springing
up that will chock [choke] all the raison of the revolution
and plunge the nation into darkness and barbarizm."
The upshot was that Maclure gave support, both financial
and moral, to Madame Fretageot's plans for establishing herself
and her school in the New World. Her letters of 1821, ad-
dressed to Maclure in Madrid, tell the story of her migration.
She left Paris on 10 July 1821, but was held in port at Le Havre
for several days by a storm, and did not reach New York until
September, after a passage of forty-seven days. She finally
settled in Philadelphia, and on 7 November 1821 wrote Maclure
that her school at 240 Filbert Street would be ready to receive
pupils on the 20th of the month. In that letter and others she
reported the friendly assistance given by John Griscom of
New York, professor of chemistry at Columbia College and
founder of what became the New York High School for
Boys, and Dr. Philip M. Price, a young Philadelphia phy-
sician, son of the superintendent of the Friends' Boarding
School in West-Town.
These contacts were significant for the future, because
Griscom and Price shared Madame Fretageot's growing interest
in the educational experiments of Robert Owen at New
Lanark, Scotland. Griscom had spent three days there with
Owen as early as 18 19, and was preparing to publish an
extensive account of the visit in his Year in Europe, which
finally appeared in 1823. Price, on the other hand, was
introduced to Owen's ideas by Madame Fretageot, who gave
him a copy of Henry Grey Macnab's New Views of Mr. Owen
of Lanark Impartially Examined, . . .Also Observations on
the New Lanark School, in the French translation by Laffon
de Ladebat, which had been published in Paris in 1821, the
year of her departure. This gift, in fact, occasioned the earliest
reference to Owen in the correspondence that passed between
Madame Fretageot and Maclure.
304 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, Philadelphia, 16 March 1822
. . . Doctor Price, of whom I spoke so often, has just now
left me. He is so much pleased with what he knows about
Mr. Owen, having given to him the traduction of Macnab
Observation and translated by Lafond Ladebat, that he thinks
if he can find a man of good sense he will send him at New-
Lanark in order to render him able to raise in this country
such an establishment.
The multitude of poor increase every day, and we have observed
that the means employed to prevent their misery are very bad tho
dictated by benevolence, because it induces them to live in a perfect
idleness and in a kind of slavery just as it is in Europe. The best
means to prevent such result is to do for them what Owen has
done. But an opposition which is not of a little consequence is
that the man chosen for that purpose could be helped by a few
number of men whose good sense and perfect harmony could able
him to follow the plan without been obliged to apply to those
whose purse are filled up but full of prejudices.
You have not a just idea how much the people here is far to
be reasonable. Each sect tries to overcome the others. Their
conversation is so much absurd, so disgusting, they are so ignorant
about their true happiness, that every one runs after a fantom
and does just as the dog of the fable, which let fall the piece of
flesh he has in his mouth to run after the shade he perceived in
the water. I observe in all their society, their acting are always
stimulated by ostentation, vanity, in short by ignorance. . . .
Owen's "new view of society" had implications far beyond
the field of education, as Madame Fretageot perceived. Since
1 817, in fact, Owen had been publicly preaching in England his
doctrine of social reform, involving the establishment of
co-operative communities. And the idea of a community of
goods was gaining ground in his mind. His broader social
philosophy, as well as his specifically educational program, was
gradually becoming known in America in the early 1820's.
Interest was perhaps more evident in New York, where a
Society for Promoting Communities published selections from
Owen's writings in 1822 in a pamphlet entitled An Essay on
Common Wealths. But there is good reason to believe that
his ideas had an even deeper and more widespread influence
in Philadelphia, where articles from his pen had been reprinted
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 305
in the Aurora as far back as 1818. By 1823, in any case,
communitarian doctrines were occasioning discussion among
some of the members of the Academy of Natural Sciences, of
which Maclure, though in Europe, was president.
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, Philadelphia, 25 March 1824
. . . The other day I went to the Academy of Natural
Sciences. Mr. [Thomas] Say read to me the letter you wrote
dated 30th November in which you do not approve the community
of wealth. I inquired about the project, and laughed much when
asking how many they were to form such society. He answered
that first they were a great number but now they remain but
2 or 3, that the others under different pretexts declined of joining
the society. After some pleasant remarks I told they would
never put such project in execution if they cannot have some
ladies among them. . . .
This letter reached Maclure in London. Events in Spain
had proved disastrous to his school. The Congress of Verona
in October 1822 had authorized French intervention in Spain
against the liberal revolution of 1820, and French troops had
crossed the frontier on 7 April 1823. In a letter of 22 June
Madame Fretageot asked Maclure, "What do the French
against the freedom of the Spaniards?" Events provided the
answer. By October reaction in Spain was in full swing, and
Maclure fled the country, forced to abandon not only the plan
but even the property of his school. In the spring of 1824 he
proceeded to the British Isles and was immediately struck with
the ferment of new ideas that he found there, contrasting so
sharply with the triumphant obscurantism of the Continent.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Dublin, Ireland,
30 June 1824
Before I was drove out of Spain by the folly, stupidity and
cruelty of despotizm, I wrote you of the probability of my visiting
the British dominions once more. . . . Find that the zeal for
education is stronger and more extensive than I have found it in
any place on either side of the Atlantic. Should the civilisation
in Britain be as much improved (for I consider education as the
most certain thermometer of all usefull civilisation) in proportion
306 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
to the greater advance it had formerly made over this country:
I shall not be astonished at the wish Mr. Phiquepal had to take
all his boys to London and to remain some time. For in no place
where I have been have I had the countenance and encouragement
that I have experienced here. . . .
From Ireland Maclure crossed to Scotland, spent a few
days in July with Robert Owen at New Lanark, and arrived
in London with renewed enthusiasm. By this time he was
fully committed to a plan for sending Phiquepal to Philadelphia
to join Madame Fretageot in an enlarged educational experi-
ment there, and he devoted part of his time to assembling
the necessary books and instruments for the project.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, London, 25 August 1824
... I am glad I have visited this country once more as I
should have had but a very imperfect idea of the state of civilisation
had I proceeded from Spain to the United States. I have been
in a state of agreeable feelings approaching to extacey ever since
I landed, to be an Eye witness of the immense progress made in
civilisation in so short a time. 'Tis realy astonishing how the
animal, possessing the same sences as inlets to knowledge, could
have slipped so long in ignorance when capable of learning so much
in so short a time as the last 8 or 10 years. In every thing both
Physical and Moral the improvement is wonderfull, and that long
neglected force, in the form of utility education, is perhaps the
most prominent, and will no doubt much facilitate the changes
we wish to propagate on your side of the Atlantic. . . .
Infant schools are quite fashionable, patronized by the famils
[females], whether as the easiest mode of raizing children by
congregating many hundreds together under the inspection of two
or three persons in place of occupying the time of 2 or 300, 'tis
indifferent (I don't inquire into motives, not being always certain
of my owne, but give Credit for effects), which I think is exceed-
ingly advantageous to Society, the learning how early it is possible
to teach and even reason with children. . . .
The advancing famils to fill all places of honor and profit that
their physical force will permit them to occupy would be the
greatest possible improvement in Society. It would be doubling
the mental force of the great mass of mankind. It would enlist
the other half of the creation in the glorious work of civilisation.
It would extend the power of mind not only by the additional
MACLUKE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 307
iiunibers but by the strong stimulant of Rivalship and Competition
it would create. The objections you make are all against their
education. That as yet has not been on a par with any usefull
occupation nor even with common sense. . . . The whole plan
must be bottomed on a higher order of famil education. To attemp
it with ideas of the old system would be attempting to wash
the Blackyman white.
I spent 3 or 4 days, the most pleasant of my life, at New
Lanark contemplating the vast improvement in society effected
by Mr. Robert Owen's courage and perserverance in spite of an
inveterate and malignant opposition. I never saw so many
men, women and children with happy & contented countenances,
nor so orderly, cheerfull & sober a society without any coertion
or physical constraint. It is on a par with the moral experiment
in the new jail of Philadelphia, with the advantage of being
executed by one philanthropic individual free from the caprice of
municipal regulations. All the children are taught from 2 years
old and upwards in natural history, geography, statistics &c, and
proves that knowledge is not only power but wealth, as Mr. O.
makes more twist in his mils than the same number of hands in
any other mill, and so superior that it draws a premium in the
market. It gives me more courage to undertake my Experimental
farming Schools, seeing how he has succeeded against a powerfull
combination of both church and state, and considering the field of
moral experiment in the United States to be the finest in the Globe.
I go from this to Paris to sell my house, which I am told will
sell for 6 or 7 times more than I gave for it, for the Garden to
build upon. And as it will be too late to go to the United States
before winter, shall spend it most probably in Sicily, and shall take
one of Phiquepal's pupils with me as a secretary, which will most
probably be Archill [Achille Fretageot] as being from his age
and acquirements the best specimen of the success of the system,
and shall bring him to you in the Spring polished by the friction
that wears morals as well as physics smooth. Think still that I can
be of more use to the Schools by being on this side the Atlantic
a little longer, as the further civilisation has progressed the more
easy it will be to establish my Experimental farming Schools, to
which all I have yet done is only a prelude. . . .
On 13 August 1824, shortly after Maclure's visit, Robert
Owen had a serious discussion at New Lanark with Richard
Flower, who had been commissioned by the Rappites to
negotiate the sale of their entire community at Harmonie,
308 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Indiana. Though Owen did not finally make up his mind
to purchase the estate for a community of his own until after
he saw it in December 1824, his enthusiasm was always so
transparent that others could read his intentions before he was
sure of them himself. As early as 10 September 1824, accord-
ingly, Maclure was writing confidently to his scientific friend,
Professor Benjamin Silliman of Yale, that "Mr. Robert
Owen, of New Lanark, has just decided to make the United
States the field of his future experiments. . . . He has
purchased all the lands upon the Wabash, belonging to the
Harmonists. . . . His liberal, philanthropic intentions cannot
fail to interest all true friends of humanity."1 On the same
day he wrote Madame Fretageot more fully.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, London, 10 September 1824
Dear Madam
I wrote to you a few days ago, and sent them to Liverpool,
answering all the letters I have received from you, the last dated
in April. Attached so much to climate, and phisical enjoyment
of health depending on it, I keep lingering in Europe, which no
doubt may astonish you, as all the moral amusements could be had
on so much superior a stile with you. Tho ever since I landed
in Ireland in June last my moral propensities has been more
encouraged and flattered by the concordance and union of more
enlightened and liberal men than at any time or in any country
I have yet visited. For even on your side of the Atlantic, where
the sun of science and usefull knowledge has been less obscured
by either public or private prejudices, the last time in 1817 when
I was at home I did not receive an atom of comfort or encourage-
ment, even in words or theory, much less any aid or assistance.
Almost all I knew, or communicated with, either appatheticaly
treated all my schemes with indifference, and not a few of them
openly reprobated, as Eutopian and folly, spending my time and
money so ridiculously. A great change may have been wrought
since in public opinion, I am induced to believe, yet I am not
certain but what are called the better orders of the Society here are
more liberal than the same rank with you. And the Laborious or
productive class are perhaps too ignorant on both sides of the
Atlantic to form a right conception of their own real interest.
1 Published in Silliman's American Journal of Science, IX, 161.
MACLURE-ERETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 309
Schools for the lower orders are the rage of the day amongst
all the sectarian tribe. The society is split into Quakers, Lutherans,
Moravians, Methodists &c, all straining every nerve to gain
prosolites. And common sense beginning to oppose the convertion
of the old, they are all seizing upon the young. Elegantly dressed
Visitors fills the infant schools, mostly famils, and caress and
encourage the poor children that are congregated in hundreds. The
motive may perhaps, in this huge overgrown plan, be the want of
occupation, but whatever the motives are, the effects are much
for the benefit of society. The children are treated with tenderness
and humanized, kept for a great part of the day out of the danger
of bad example, and freed from the temptation of immitating
the vices and passions of their parents, who begin to be convinced
of the advantages by finding their more docile and obedient and
more reasonable and correct in all their actions. Example is far
before precept. The improvement of the child will conduce to a
change in the parent, and civilisation be advanced at both ends.
Mecanical institutions for the information of journemen and
apprentices are spreading. Hundreds of thousands [of] periodical
publications, from Id to 4d per no., are diseminated weekly
amongst the working people, containing more Science, Knowledge
and Phylosophy than was to be found 50 years ago in the first
Scientific Societies.
Mr. Robert Owen of New Lanark is now here and intends
making the United States the theatre of his future experiments
on the facility of rendering the human species happy, and proving
the infinite satisfaction, pleasure and happiness derived from the
attempt of such a self approbating work. Nothing on earth can
give more satisfaction and pleasure than the certainty of the only
man in Europe who has a proper idea of mankind and the use he
ought to make of his faculties is going to join the finest and most
rational Society on the Globe. Mr. O. means to sail in one of the
Xew York packets from Liverpool the end of this month or
beginning of next to make arrangements for one of the most
beneficent experiments ever attempted by either public or private,
and if it succeeds (which I sincerely wish and hope and think it
will, so far as to encourage others in a more advanced state of
civilisation to follow his example) will mark an epoch in the
history of man that will elevate him far above what he has yet
been or perhaps expected to be.
In a trunk that will go in the New York packet from this 1st
October to Mr. Robertson, I have sent you a small parcel of
books, &c. Not finding anything respecting education that could
310 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
advance our practice one Iota, have tryed hard to persuade the
makers of Mathematical and Physolophical Instruments to make
something plain and strong for Schools, unincumbered with the
expense of ornament. In vain. They would not deviate from
their antient routin, so we must look else where, as the price of
new ones is extravagant. Indeed, money is of no value in the
present mania for paper, which the paper mills supply in abund-
ance, also will, if it continues. But I fear they are fast posting to
a crisis, when a shilling will go further than a pound now.
I remain your friend
Wm Maclure
Three weeks later Maclure was in Paris, and his first letter
from there stated specifically the educational innovations he
was anxious to transplant to America — mechanics or working-
men's institutes and infant schools. Though Owen was
mentioned again, the letter showed clearly that the idea of
joining forces with him had not yet occurred to Maclure.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Paris, 1 October 1824
. . . There was but two moral improvements I saw in Britain
worth the transporting across the Atlantic. The first and most
usefull was the mecanic institutions & cheap periodical publications
for disseminating usefull knowledge thro the great mass of in-
dustrious producers, and thereby giving the greatest quantum of
happiness to the greatest number, which is out of your department
and I therefore won't trouble you with any details.
The second was the Infant Schools, an establishment that lays
the ax to the root of all evil by fixing a solid foundation to the
future superstructure of men's moral and physical comforts, more
particularly as the benefits are bestowed on the millions, it being
as yet too humble to attract the attention of the few rich and in
general monopolizers of everything good. It may have produced
some advantage to the Laboring Classes before their opponents
the priviledged few perceive the consequences. It is likewise
a great advantage in our colonial apish propensity that it has
originated under the auspices of old mother Britain, and that all
the British Ladies who have any ambition to attract consideration
patronize and even assist at the lessons given to the young and
ragged fry of the as yet totally neglected poor. . . .
Mr. Owen is, I suppose, by the time this reaches you, in the
United States, and your friend Dr. Price seems disposed to
join him. . . .
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 311
Philip M. Price was by this time in England, and his reports
of Owen reinforced the favorable opinion that Madame
Fretageot had received from Maclure's letters.
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, Philadelphia,
21 October 1824
Your two last letters dated 28th of August and 10th of Sep-
tember received. We will have much to say on account of the
astonishing progress of sciences in England, specially on what
concerns education. But as the matter requires on my side more
information, with the help of your own observations, I reserve it
for next spring, where I shall have the pleasure to talk with you. . . .
I have received a letter of Dr. Price from Liverpool. He
informs me that Mr. Owen is to leave that place the 20th of
September for New- York, and that his intention is to visit my
school. I shall certainly be very much pleased to talk with a man
that I have desired to see since I heard of him. The Dr. tells me
exactly what you say yourself on his intention of buying a large
tract of land to establish his plan in our side of the Atlantic. It
will be a great benefit indeed for this country.
And you, my good friend, you will not be idle ! Truly my
feelings are so much please, specially that I can act a little part
in this great undertaking of human happiness. That I owe to
you that this happy situation makes it 1000 times greater. If you
was by me in this moment that my pen runs on the paper to express
that my tongue would better say, I should be crazy for joy.
I forgot to tell you that Dr. Price had been to New Lanark
previous his letter. He is so much enchanted with what he has
seen that his letter is full of descriptions very interesting. . . .
If the attraction of Owen's ideas was strong, the charm of
his personality was irresistible. Madame Fretageot soon came
under the spell. Owen landed in New York on 4 November
1824, reached Philadelphia on the 19th, and called on Madame
Fretageot on the 21st. A week later, after Owen's departure
for Washington, she described the meeting to Maclure.
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, Philadelphia,
28 November 1824
... I have had the visit of Mr. Owen. When he entered in
my house I took his hands saying ; there is the man I desired so
much to converse with ! And you are, said he, the woman that
312 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
I wish to see. We are old acquaintances and in the mean time he
gave me a kiss of friendship that I returned heartly. We talked
about one hour and half, but we could not talk freely. I was
surrounded by some visitors and our conversation was but on
general subjects. He told me he will in his return have a private
conversation with me. He thinks it will be in April next.
You have no idea what pleasure I felt when I was talking by
the side of a man whose actions and principles are so much in
harmony with mine. When he said that children must be taken
just when born in order to write in those blanck paper but what
is correct, I felt an encrease of desire to arrive at that periode
of my life where as much by my economy and the help of some
friends I shall be able to put in practice that project of taking little
babies who will be absolutely mine. Next Spring I will be in
company with those two me[n] for whom I have the greatest
esteem : You and Him ; I will enjoy their conversation. . . .
Though Madame Fretageot linked the two men in her
mind, she had not yet thought of combining their two projects.
Her letter went on to discuss plans for expanding her school
in the place that she had just acquired for it in the country
outside Philadelphia — plans that would obviously preclude any
migration to New Harmony. When Maclure replied, he, too,
revealed no thought of connecting his own project with Owen's,
except in so far as one might support the other in fighting
the prejudices of existing society.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Paris, 13 January 1825
... I am glad to learn that Mr. Owen called on you, and
rejoyce most sincerely that in the prospect of his making the
United States his theatre of action; in which, as in everything
else, I am selfish, considering him as the pioneer of reform. His
immense mecanizm will require so broad and commodious a road
that our childish plans will follow him without being obstructed
by the half the prejudice, superstition & bigotry we should have to
fight with unaided by him. But his plans go deep into the sureties
both of church and state, and most probably will be violently
opposed by the corrupt and hypocrytic bands that live by the
plunder of either. . . .
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Paris, 31 January 1825
. . . My letters from Edinburg mention they hear of
Mr. Owen's arrival in Britain and intention of returning to the
■
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 313
United States with all his establishment. I'm not disinterested
in wishing him every success, as I consider him as a pioneer to
every moral improvement. . . . Even partial success, on the
great scale of his undertaking a radical reform, will facilitate every
species of amelioration and place human happiness upon a broad
wellpaved road, on which human existence may run without fear
of hindrance toward the hight of perfection their faculties will
permit them. . . .
The information that Maclure received from Edinburgh
was erroneous; Owen did not leave the United States until
16 July 1825. It was during the early months of 1825, in
fact, that he carried on his most successful propaganda. Upon
completing arrangements for the purchase of the Rappite
property, he left New Harmony on 3 January (after a stay
of slightly less than a month), and from then until mid-April
he was in the East. Toward the end of January or early in
February he visited Philadelphia again.
His plans completed, Owen was able to propagandize even
more effectively than before. The results were momentous.
He conferred again with Maclure's friends in the Academy
of Natural Sciences — Thomas Say and Charles Alexandre
Lesueur, the naturalists, Dr. Gerard Troost, the mineralogist,
and John Speakman, the former treasurer and librarian of the
Academy — and before long they were discussing plans to
transfer their scientific work to Owen's community. Madame
Fretageot became the most ardent convert of all. Her
enthusiasm was quickly communicated to Phiquepal, who had
arrived in Philadelphia on 29 December 1824, bringing with
him his pupils from France to continue his school under
Maclure's patronage. Like the men of science in the Academy,
the two Pestalozzian teachers considered together the idea of
transferring their activities to New Harmony. While Maclure
in Paris was making his own preparations for future work in
America, his various friends in Philadelphia were concerting
a great new plan for him. This involved nothing less than the
merger of all Maclure's educational and scientific enterprises
with the great social experiment that Owen was inaugurating
in the West.
314 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, Philadelphia,
11 February 1825
... I told you already that I have seen Mr. Owen since he
has bought 27000 acres of land at Harmony in Indiana. There
he will found a new colony on a plan which has made already a
great many proselites. He wishes much to see you, and expect
that next April you will converse with him on the subject. He is
now at Washington for several weeks. He will visit us before
to return to Harmony, and from thence he will return in England
to prepare his coming with a part or with all his population.
After all that I know concerning his plan I have no doubt
you will change something in your intention about your school.
I talked with him on the subject. He said that the more good
means are reunited the more the effects are powerful, but whe[n]
scattered they do little or no effect. We must, says he, work
all at once on a spot where the difficulties are almost removed.
Then it is only so that we are able to show what are the effects
of a good education. He observed that I would devote 30 years
of my life where I now am without being able to conterbalance
the evils which surround my pupils. You are even, said he, obliged
to appear supporting by your silence the thousand prejudices
which shall be allways a barrier against which your best endeavour
will fail. That reasoning is exact with my own observations ; but
I repeat I wait for your arrival before to fix my opinion.
Phiquepal thinks his situation much unpleasant. He is about
to begin with his school. He has about 10 or 12 children who are
waiting that every thing be ready to receive them. But as he is
nearly as much pleased as I am with Mr. Owen he feels as if he
was to begin a thing that he will not be able to finish. For my
part I do not doubt that if you was here he would not begin his
school on this place. I do not speak to him about that, because
I am not so much assured that my views or opinions are right.
I leave it to you to judge. Your experience, your judgment will
help me much in this. But you must make haste. The matter is
of some importance and ought to engage you not to loose time. . . .
Doctor Price will be one of the new settlers [at New Harmony] .
He will arrive soon with a part of the children of New Lanark. He
appears quite decided to devote his life time to education. His
last letters are filled up with questions about the method of teaching
children. He regrets very much of not having observed more
when he was near me, but he says he will devote the time he will be
at Philadelphia to improve himself before to proceed to Harmony.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 315
There is already a great many persons of this town making
their preparations. Several of them are your acquaintances
Doctor Troost, Mr. Say, Mr. Speakman, great many others, who
expect you will join them. If anything of that kind is to happen
you may depend that I will not say no, for my part. In all cases
I think you would do very well to gather as many persons you
would judge able to be of some utility in either places and bring
them with you. . . . And the best of all, come as quick as possible.
It will never be to[o] soon when I will have the pleasure of seing
you. Be convinced of that, my dear friend. I will squeeze your
hands with much pleasure. The idea only causes an agitation
which shakes my hand. Don't you think so? I would never end
if I was to give a description of the pleasure that I expect. I can
only say that I remain for ever your most affectionate
M D Fretageot
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, Philadelphia,
18 February 1825
... I received a letter yesterday from Mr. Owen. He is now
at Washington and desire to see Mr. Phiquepal. He says that
he is sorry Phiquepal has entered already in some expense for
his school, that if you was here he has no doubt you would be of
his advice, and it is on that purposs he engages Mr. Phi to go to
Washington in order to know exactly what he entends to explain
in a letter that he will write to you. Phiquepal will go tomorrow.
You'll know the result of his visit in an other letter. I will have
this one sent by the Packet. I wrote some days ago much concern-
ing Mr. Owen. I need not repeat his success. As I will be
informed better on Phi's return, you'll know the whole. . . .
In all cases you would do very well to look for some useful
persons, as a man who should be much acquainted with Lith-
ography, a good mecanician, a good Chimist, &c, in fact people
who would be useful in the new empire of good sense, as it called
by Mr. Owen. If, after being acquainted with all the advantages
that are to be met in that new colony for the reform and conse-
quently for the happiness of human race, you decide to join it ; the
collection would be at your disposal and every thing should be
ready. If I was to listen to my opinion I would think that it
will meet with yours. . . .
It is necessary to observe that in point of education the most
essential is that children be surrounded by persons whose actions
and speach be correct, that when it is a mixture of wise and fools
the effects are in proportion of the more or less of the mixture.
316 TNDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Then we can determine easely the situation the most convenient
for the purposs ; it is what said Mr. Owen. My friend, you cannot
delay your departure. You are expected for the accomplishing
of a great undertaking. You are expected by all your friends
among whom I am not the least. Your presence will make a good
effect. For my part I cannot express or cannot give a description
of the pleasure that I will experience when I will have the happiness
of seeing again the one that I have so much desired. . . .
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, Philadelphia,
[9 and] 13 March 18252
I told you in my last that Phiquepal was going to Washington
to meet with Mr. Owen. He has been much delighted with that
excelent man ; and is now convinced that you will join in his
plan. Mr. Owen is coming next week to explain me every thing
and concert with me on the means to put in execution. He will
write to you, on the matter, after having explained me what are
his intention. After what Phiquepal has heard at Washington
it appears that every man of good sense support him with all their
power ; here at Philadelphia there is a great number of persons
preparing for their departure. I don't mean that they are going
immediately but are terminating their business in order to be ready
next fall. Mr. Owen's intention was to go directly to Harmony
in leaving Washington and be returned in the begining of May, but
he had not thought to spend some days here, consequently he will
not be returned before June. . . .
Mr. Owen is not arrived yet. I wait him with impatience. He
sent me his speach at Washington, February 25th, which is a
master piece of eloquence, and appears having made a powerful
effect on the auditory. The more I know of that man, of his
plan and of his high sense, the more I am convinced that we will
join in his undertaking. Do come as soon as possible. Do not
forget to gather as many people for the new colony. . . .
1 will not seal this before the 13, expecting to see Mr. Owen
before to send this letter. To day is the 9th. I am obliged to
close this if I will have it going the 15th. . . .
[Postscript.] I have not bought the house, neither will I do
any thing of that kind before a better reflection. You will
fix the all. . . .
2 The letter was written on various dates. The second and third quoted
paragraphs belong to 9 March, as the text shows ; the first had been written
earlier. The letter itself was dated at the end 13 March.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 317
Owen's six weeks in Washington in February and March
of 1825 were the climax of his American tour. The high points
came on 25 February and 7 March, when his Tiuo Discourses
on a New System of Society were "delivered in the Hall of
Representatives at Washington, in the presence of the President
of the United States, the President elect, heads of Departments,
members of Congress, &c. &c." — as the title pages of the printed
reports proclaimed in edition after edition. Fresh from these
triumphs, Owen called on Madame Fretageot and Phiquepal at
their school in Philadelphia on 25 or 26 March. Together they
planned a joint letter to Maclure. On the first page Owen
wrote his message ; Madame Fretageot covered the second and
third pages with hers; and Phiquepal filled up the sheet.
Robert Owen to Maclure, Philadelphia, 27 March 1825
Madame Fretageot & Mr. Phiquepal's Academies
27 March 1825
My dear Sir,
I am surrounded by your friends here & we have had much
conversation respecting you & your charitable objects. The result
of which is a great desire on the part of all of them to see you
here & to have your direction in various important matters which
they have before them. In this desire I also join & hope to see you
here on my return from the western states in about two months
hence, previous to my return to Europe. The parties named
^above to give you the details of these matters. In the mean-
time . . . [I] remain
Your affectionate friend
Robt. Owen
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, Philadelphia, 28 March 1825
You see, my dear friend, that we have had the delightful
pleasure of hearing the best man explaining a plan which is the
best calculated for human happiness.
In my last I told you that I did not expect him from Washing-
ton on account of his numerous occupations. But you may judge
how I was agreably surprised when I received a letter from him
announcing he would be amongst us the 25th and would like to
stay 24 hours with us. We prepared at Phiquepal ['s] every
thing for his reception. Dr. Troost was charged to bring him
318 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
in a carriage that I had ordered the day before his arrival. When
he arrived at Ph's I was not there on account of the rain.
Messrs. Say, Speakman and Troust [sic] offered to come for
me, but he would not permit any of them to carry me there. He
came and the pleasure that I felt when he took me in his arms
cannot be equalled only by the one I will experience when I will
have the happiness of taking your hands in mine ! It is necessary
that I get some calm if I will be able to enter in the details that
have remained my business to explain.
The first society will be founded on the following principles.
Those who will be received the first shall be choosen amongst the
best principled being, in order to form by their example those who
afterwards will be received indiscriminately. The town already
built will be allowed to them for their residence, and [they] will
remain there untill the community will allow them to take place
in the new town, which plan would be to[o] long to detail. The
first settlers by their wealth, their industry will establish all that
is proper to accumulate prosperity, union, peace and consequently,
happiness. The children's education is what will occupy the
most, because from them depend the future prosperity not only
of the community but of all. Those who will be witnesses of
such happy result will of course be convinced that the present
state of society is founded on such principles that it is quite im-
possible to be happy according its rules. This is but an imperfect
sketch, but you'll be soon here ; and not doubt remain in my mind
that you'll join the plan as soon as you'll be informed of it as we are.
When Mr. Owen left us yesterday he engaged us to pass the
evening at Mr. Speakman, who was to collect there about 20 or
30 persons of every description who where all desirous to express
their opinion on different subject. We went there at six in the
evening, P. and I, and if it had been possible to encrease our
esteem for that excellent man, indeed it would have been the case.
You have no idea of his patience, calmness, benevolence, and
kindness towards his fellow creatures even the most despisable.
His answers are clear, precise. Every one understand them
perfectly well. Questioned on religion, he was quite candid in
his answer and yet did not hurt the feeling of the most bigotted.
He shewed them the errors of it by their result, and pursuing with
the same precision he convinced them that a total reverse was to
be obtained in the human mind to acquire that peace so necessary
to happiness. I would not finish if I was to relate all. I have
heard and seen but what is positive in my mind as well as in the
mind of all those who have had the same opportunity. It is that
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 319
a great change is to take place on this part of our hemisphere.
When we left him he told us that we will soon rejoin and said he
had no doubt you will give your approbation. But I reppeat, my
dear friend, there would be no pleasure any where if you was not
to participate of it. I hope you will not read this in France. It
s[e]ems to me that you are making your trunks and that I will
soon enjoy the pleasure of seeing you.
March 28th 1825
M. D. Fretageot
Phiquepal joins to me with the same sentiment.
William S. Phiquepal to Maclure, Philadelphia,
28 March 1825
Dear Sir
You see by the letter of Madme. Fretageot and that of
Mr. Owen that we have had the pleasure of spending some time
with that excellent man. I do not think there is any body in the
world better calculated to put into execution his plan ; it is to say, to
realize all that has been wished for by all the good and thinking
men of all ages and countries.
One thing only has been wanting to us these two days past ; it
is to have you with him. Come then as soon as you can. Mr. O.
intends to be here at the end of May and spend a fortnight with
us, with the expectation to meet you here. A great deal may
be expected from that reunion for the happiness of menkind. Say
and Lesueur do not seem less anxious for your arrival. Mr. Ow's
benevolence seems to overcome . . . difficulties that were to be
expected from the prejudices of all kind that are so numerous
even on this part of the world. So powerfull is truth when
uttered with kindness.
I remain very sincerely yours
28th March Wm. S. Phiquepal
Maclure replied to Madame Fretageot and to Phiquepal on
9 and 14 May 1825, according to the notation he made on this
tripartite letter. Unfortunately none of Maclure's letters from
Paris later than 26 February have been preserved, and at that
time he had not received the report even of Owen's second visit
to Madame Fretageot in late January or early February. The
only indication of his general attitude toward Owen, after re-
ceiving the bombardment of letters from his American friends,
was a communication he sent to Benjamin Silliman from Paris.
320 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Maclure to Silliman, Paris, 2 May 1825s
... It is fortunate that Mr. Owen has pitched upon a location,
where prejudices will not have their force of combination to
obstruct improvement: that is but too lamentably common in
communities where there is a more dense population ; for it would
be exceedingly mortifying if our industrious producers of public
and private wealth, should reject so great a benefit as the intro-
duction of his plans must be to every kind of labour, and our
disgrace and humiliation would be much aggravated, if the two
establishments now forming in Britain were to succeed, and the
attempt now making in America were to fail. . . .
Labour in some shape or other is the cause of all production ;
of course all the revenue of every society is created by those that
work. The annual production of Great Britain, is estimated at
£54 sterling for every man, woman, and child; but only £11 ster-
ling per annum, falls to the share of those who produce it ; viz. about
1/5 : the other 4/5 go for tithes, taxes, masters, &c. &c. Such
an order of things is neither reasonable nor just, and to rectify
it as far as possible, by laying the axe to the root of the evil, taking
away the temptation to avarice, cheating, and crime, is the object
of the new system. It proposes to remedy the evil, by enabling
the industrious producer to retain a far greater proportion of the
produce of his labour, and removing the necessity of his working
more than a few hours in the day, to obtain every necessary
comfort, leaving the rest of his time for moral improvement
and recreation. . . .
The only objection urged by the enemies of the system is, that
it is impossible ! the eternal cry against every thing new ; for, say
they, how can you eradicate the passions of men? — There is no
intention of rooting them out ; but the firm resolution is taken of
not planting the violent antisocial passions, all of which are
nourished, strengthened, and fortified from the cradle to the
grave, by the unjust and cruel treatment of most of the rulers of
mankind. The consequences of the new system to mankind will
be so beneficial to the world, that it is at least worth a fair and
impartial trial. . . .
To Madame Fretageot her patron's messages from Europe
were tantalizing. His praise of Owen was warm and ample
enough, but he failed to answer the question uppermost in her
mind — whether he would transfer his enterprises to New
3 Printed in American Journal of Science, X, 165-67.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 321
Harmony. Knowing that Maclure would sail for America early
in June, she wrote him on the ioth of that month and sent the
letter to New York to await his arrival. He landed on 9 July
1825 and on the T2th she wrote him two additional letters, the
first when she read of his debarkation in the newspapers, the
second when she received a friendly but noncommittal note he
had written her on the ioth. In the last of her letters,
postmarked 13 July, she urged again the desirability of making
common cause with Owen.
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, Philadelphia, 12 July 1825
. . . Mr. Owen has advanced the progress of good sense more
within these last six months than it would have been in hundred
years with the common steps of progressive knowledge. I wish
you had time enough to understand his plan, because I know you
will recognise in it all the feelings that have engaged all your atten-
tion these 20 last years in favour of humankind. I write to him in
order to engage him to accompany you here. He will find a vessel
going the 20th that is not a great difference for his arrival in
England. Then you would have time plenty to investigate the mat-
ter thoroughly the subject. For my part I would like it very much.
Till now, what you say about it did not convince me, because
you was not informed of it. My desire in this is not to see you
to agree with my opinion but to help me to investigate the subject
fully. It suits me so perfectly that I am not only desirous to see
its progress and its execution, but to add my exertions to those of
this benevolent man. Then, my excellent friend, it is you who
will direct me in all this. I said so to Mr. Owen. He knows that
I am devoted to your opinion by the esteem that you have inspired
me, and I may add that I have not such confidence in my wisdom
as to engage myself in such thing without the advice of my friend.
But also you must expect that I will support my opinion with all
the advantage that would give the possibility of knowing the plan
more than you. It is why I engage Mr. Owen to stay with you
so long as possible.
We have fixed your appartement at Phiquepal's. There I shall
enjoy the pleasure of your presence. You will be better than in
town, where the heat is so intense that the inhabitants fly
to the country.
Let me know when you'll leave New York because I will be
in town to receive you at the steam-boat.
322 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Fortunately for the historian, Maclure remained in New
York long enough to reply to this letter. It was the last
chance he had to define his position on Owen's project
before coming face to face with the deferential but resolute
enthusiast in Philadelphia.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, New York, 15 July 1825
Dear Madam
Your letter of the 12 July received. When the imagination is
exalted so as to leave room only for one favorite Idea in the mind,
it approaches to insanity. All that Mr. Owen can possibly say
about his plan cannot add one iota to the favorable opinion I have
always had of the immense benefit that must accrue to humanity
by the putting it into practice. But there is two things to be con-
sidered and cooly examined. The first is the reasonableness of
the plan and the goodness and solidity of the theory, in which I
perfectly agree with Mr. Owen and all his most enthousiastical
supporters. The second is the most difficult to annalise as the
means of putting in practise, because the materials he has to work
upon are stubborn, crooked and too often bent in an opposite
direction from their owne most evident interests.
At one time I had the vanity to suppose that individual exertion
could possibly effect some little reformation in men, thrust into and
formed by the iron mould of habit, carefully and ingeniously
wrought by all the talents and cunning of the industrious, hypo-
critical priests, aided by the civil and political tyrants for thousands
of years. Taking warning from the failure of the vast number
who in every age have unsuccessfully attempted it, indolence
prompted me to try the little means in my power on children. And
not withstanding the immense diffusion of knowledge within the
last 30 years, I'm still affraid that the education of the children
must be the chief support and foundation of the system. Even
tho the Old should prove refractory they will be certain of the
Young. But time will be requisite. And it's most probable that
during that time both you and Phiquepal can be more usefully
employed, both for yourselves and others, than joining Mr. 0[wen]
in the commencement of his most arduous undertaking.
Since writing the above I have just seen Mr. Owen for a few
minutes, who embarks for England in the Canada toomorrow
morning and cannot give much of his time, but he will call this
evening and we will have more conversation. I'm highly delighted,
and as much astonish, at his success. The revolution in the public
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 323
mind must be beyond the most enthusiastic conception. Every one
that he has met approves of his plans and even the priests seems
to him to favor them.
I hope it will be realized and have no doubt that much will be
accomplished for the good of mankind, but I must give you. the
specimen of what I found here the few days I have been. Some
weeks before I left Paris I saw a letter from Boston describing
a Girls' School on the joint Pestalozzi & Lancaster Systems ... in-
corporated, a large house built for it, and three of the principle
men in Boston officers & directors, whose names I believe I
mentioned to you but have now forgot both them and the tittle
of the school. Wishing to send them a coppy of Gardners
Dictionary & Michauds Silva,4 as few or no occasions offer to send
anything to the north from Philadelphia (example the Journal of
Physic for the Geological Society not yet arrived), I have been
making inquiry at some hundreds of Bostonians here for this three
days in vain. No one ever heard of such a school, and scarce any
of them had the patience to hear of a new fangled School which
the rage of the day, as they said, was constantly inventing. Make
money has been the only object of most I have met with since
I landed. Wild speculations and golden dreams entirely occupies
the upper stories [ ?] of most of the Bipeds. If I was to take the
nation from the sample I have seen, I should be apt to think
Mr. Ofwen] had taken silence for consent, when it was only
indifference bordering on contempt. . . . Mr. Owen keeps a stedy
lookout on his object, but did not see or hear of any such school
at Boston. All this for yourself. Let us look at things and tho we
keep our Ears always open have no great dependence on what we
hear. I loose every day some of the little faith I had in my hearing.
I shall embark with your two nephews and my servant too-
morrow morning in the steamboat for Phila[delphi]a, and shall
arrive in the Evening. And in spite of the mania I see here, am
much gratifyed by the general improvement in Society, and think
Mr. 0[wen] may advance more rapidly than I had expected, but
still the experiment is to be tryed. But we shall talk more about it.
I remain yours sincerely
Wm Maclure
4 In his letter to Silliman of 2 May 1825, already quoted in part, Maclure
wrote: "Finding that [Frangois Andre] Michaux intended to sell his whole
edition of the [North] American Sylva with coloured plates, and thinking
it a useful book, that we ought to have in the United States, I bought the
whole edition with the 156 Copper-plates, which I shall bring with me, and
shall send a copy to the American Geological Society and give others to
324 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Talk more about it they did. But the spoken word vanishes
with the saying. With the need for correspondence ended, the
historical record becomes fragmentary, and the final decision
is hard to date. The arguments we know, for they had already
been rehearsed. And we know that Madame Fretageot pre-
vailed, for in the end Maclure with all his scientific and
educational associates joined Owen at New Harmony. The
details of the story can only be pieced together from scattered
bits of chronology.
On 19 August 1825, a month after reaching Philadelphia,
Maclure wrote for Silliman's American Journal of Science a
description of the schools of Madame Fretageot and Phiquepal,
but dropped no hint that they might be moved from Phila-
delphia.5 A week later Maclure was gone from Philadelphia,
and the letter he wrote Madame Fretageot on 28 August
discussed "Mr. 0[wen]'s plans, which is intended to consolidate
independence and render commerce as well as communication
unnecessary as a means of physical support, and only used as
a passtime and moral amusement." But he gave no indication
that he intended himself to go to New Harmony with him. A
letter from Madame Fretageot on the same day mentioned
this possibility, but ambiguously.
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, Philadelphia,
28 August 1825
. . . Samuel Wood met Phiquepal last week at Philadelphia
and told that he had heard you was going to Harmony, taking with
you, among several others, he and Mrs. Fretageot, that the town
was talking much on that migration. Ph. told, he knew nothing
about it, and, as people is much inclined talking without knowing
what they say, the best was not to take notice of it. . . .
some of the Agricultural Societies." The work was later reprinted at
New Harmony ; see below, p. 407.
5 Maclure, "An Epitome of the Improved Pestalozzian System of Educa-
tion as Practised by William Phiquepal and Madam Fretageot," in American
Journal of Science, X, 145-51. The dated portion of the article was a letter
from Maclure printed at the end, p. 151. The epitome itself had been
written somewhat earlier.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 325
Robert Owen was out of the country for three and a half
months, from 16 July until 6 November 1825, and this may
account for Maclure's continued indecision. Within a week
of his return, however, Owen was in Philadelphia, conferring
with Maclure, Madame Fretageot, Say, Speakman, and
Dr. Price, and he made a second trip there at the end of the
month. Final arrangements for Maclure and his colleagues
to join the New Harmony community must have been completed
during these visits, for on 8 December 1825 Owen, Maclure,
Madame Fretageot, Phiquepal, Say, Lesueur, Dr. Price,
R. D. Owen, and some thirty others were at Pittsburgh ready to
embark on the keelboat "Philanthropist" for the voyage down
the Ohio River to New Harmony. The vessel was caught in
the ice near Beaver, and Owen left the party to continue by
stage to New Harmony, where he arrived on 12 January.
Meanwhile, on 9 January, the "Philanthropist" was finally
cut loose, and on the 23d this "Boatload of Knowledge" reached
Mount Vernon, Indiana. The journey to New Harmony was
completed by wagon on 26 January 1826. The educational
and scientific projects of Maclure and the social projects of
Owen were now joined in what was to prove a somewhat
uneasy partnership.
III. THE NEW HARMONY KALEIDOSCOPE
January-September 1826
When Maclure and his party arrived in New Harmony
on 26 January 1826, the community was in the throes of
reorganization. On the previous day its members had resolved
themselves into a convention to frame a new and permanent
constitution for the long-heralded New Harmony Community
of Equality, replacing the Preliminary Society set up nine
months before. This labor of reorganization Maclure had no
intention of sharing. He was excused from serving on the
committee to draft the new constitution, and he devoted himself
to the establishment of his school. So rapidly did the various
plans go forward on paper that the New-Harmony Gazette was
able to publish in its issue of 15 February 1826 not only the con-
stitution of the New Harmony Community of Equality (adopted
on the 5th) but also two pages of material on Maclure's educa-
tional plans. Viewing these two achievements, the editor of the
Gazette envisaged the time, fast approaching, when "the earth
would become a garden of Eden, and man, surrounded by such
associates, would indeed find himself in Paradise."1
Never did prophet hit wider of the mark. The convention
was not yet over when the community split into factions ; the
very same issue of the Gazette that published the new constitu-
tion carried also the news of the first schism. Thereafter
reorganization followed reorganization in never-ending se-
quence until, a year later, the last bent wire snapped, and the
New Harmony community came to an end. Maclure's hope
of continuing quietly with his schools was an illusion quickly
shattered. For fifteen months after his arrival in New
Harmony he was entangled, willy-nilly, in affairs that he
1 New-Harmony Gazette, I, 166 (15 Feb. 1826). On pp. 161-63 the new
constitution was published ; on pp. 166-67, the educational plans. Part of the
latter consisted of a reprint of the article in Silliman's Journal, mentioned
above, p. 324, n. 5. Maclure was as yet so little known in the community
that the Gazette spelled his name M'Clure.
(326)
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 327
thought were to have been Owen's alone. To comprehend the
letters he wrote during this period one must be able to follow the
kaleidoscopic changes that were occurring in the organization
of the communities at New Harmony. This is far from easy.
Owen had organized the Preliminary Society in April and
May 1825 as "a halfway house ... in which we shall remain,
only until we can change our old garments, and fully prepare
ourselves for the new state of existence, into which we hope
to enter."2 According to the original plan this probationary
period was to have lasted from two to three years. Owen had
argued with eloquence the necessity for this delay, but the
person he had found hardest to convince was himself.
In subsequent months Owen drank deeply of the enthusiasm
he himself had distilled and suffered a kind of autointoxication.
In London in the summer of 1825 he read the Lecture on
Hitman Happiness that John Gray had published in his absence,
and he heard much of the Orbiston Community near Glasgow
which Abram Combe had begun to erect in March 1825. As
he neared the United States again in October 1825 his
enthusiasm bubbled over in a letter written at sea, which he
addressed to Americans generally. A few weeks later, in
Philadelphia, he triumphed over the misgivings of Maclure
and drew the whole Philadelphia group westward with him.
Thus encouraged, he found no difficulty in convincing himself
that the apocalyptic trumpets were already sounding, that
further delay would be a plain dereliction of duty. He came
to believe, it is true, that he had launched the Community of
Equality only after carefully examining the state of affairs
at New Harmony and soberly evaluating the experience of
preceding months. This was sheer self-delusion. On the very
evening of his return, 12 January 1826, he began a series of
enthusiastic discourses in New Harmony Hall, and within less
than two weeks of his arrival the reorganization was under way.
Thirteen days of propaganda had brought the convention
into being; twelve days were spent in drafting the new consti-
2 Robert Owen, "Address ... on Wednesday, the 27th of April, 1825, in
the Hall of New-Harmony," in New-Harmony Gazette, I, 2 (1 Oct. 1825).
328 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
tution. Fourteen days sufficed to prove it completely unwork-
able. On 19 February 1826 the new community voted "to
request the aid of Mr. Owen for one year, in conducting and
superintending the concerns of the Community, in conformity
with the principles of the Constitution."3 The last phrase was
a euphemism. Everyone understood that the Constitution was
already "as nothing."4 Four clearly defined factions were in
existence, reflecting precisely those differences in "habits,
condition and sentiments" which Owen had trusted the Pre-
liminary Society to eradicate.
One group had conscientious scruples against uniting
permanently with members they considered atheists. They
were granted 1300 acres of land two miles from town to
organize a separate Community No. 2, which they named
Macluria — not in recognition of any support from Maclure
but perhaps on the erroneous assumption that his religious
beliefs were more orthodox than Owen's.
Another faction seems to have had no other basis than the
national self-consciousness of an immigrant group. A number
of English farmers formed a Community No. 3 on 1400 acres
of Owen's land a mile from the center of New Harmony. In-
toxicated by the spirit of innovation, they adopted a bizarre
system of geographical nomenclature invented by one of their
members, and called their community Feiba-Peveli.
Both the new communities were organized in March 1826.
By mid-April nine log houses at Macluria were housing eighty
persons, and at least one structure was going up at Feiba-Peveli.
Throughout the summer and fall — the period during which
Maclure wrote the letters included in the present chapter — both
colonies were living under their own constitutions, unaffected
by the incessant reorganization of the parent community.
In the town of New Harmony itself resided the members
of the two remaining factions. A majority clung with vaguely
defined allegiance to the new and abortive constitution, and
3 New-Harmony Gazette, I, 175 (22 Feb. 1826).
4 Thomas Pears to Benjamin Bakewell, New Harmony, 4 March 1826,
in Pears Papers, p. 67.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 329
were sometimes called Constitutionalists. This miscellaneous
group, too divided in interest to be properly called a faction,
formed the population upon which Owen was to try his
successive experiments during the year that followed.
Over against this heterogeneous mass stood a compact
group primarily interested in the educational and scientific
aims of the New Harmony experiment — the Literati, so their
opponents called them.5 This was the group, of course, in
which Maclure was interested, but it does not appear that he
was the prime mover in their first schismatic efforts. Rather
it was Owen's twro sons, Robert Dale and William, who took
the leadership at first, along with Robert L. Jennings and
perhaps Madame Fretageot. As early as the middle of
February, when the new constitution was suspended, they
planned a separate community within the town of New
Harmony, which would use some of the buildings — the best
ones, their opponents said — for educational purposes. Robert
Owen refused to countenance the proposal, and their abortive
organization collapsed, though the idea lived on.
Owen's solution to the problem of organizing a community
among the population of the town itself was to select a "nucleus"
of twTenty-four persons who would contract with him for the
land and then admit additional members and probationers. The
''nucleus" was appointed early in March 1826, and for a couple
of months there was a flurry of activity under the new
auspices. "Meetings were held every evening; and often several
3 The term used by Thomas Pears. Ibid. The names applied by Pears
to the four factions may have been used by him alone, but it is not correct
to say, as does his editor, that "the population was not divided along these
lines, nor were these factions, as described [by Pears], formed into separate
communities." Actually Pears's "Conscientious" were the founders of
Macluria, his "English Society" the founders of Feiba-Peveli, his "Literati"
the founders of the Education Society, and his "Constitutionalists" the
remainder. The proposal for a separate Education Society aroused great
opposition when first put forward. Ibid., pp. 71-72, 75, 78; Paul Brown,
Twelve Months in New-Harmony (Cincinnati, 1827), pp. 14, 18-19. Among
the teachers, Joseph Neef, who arrived 20 March 1826, was the principal
(perhaps the only) opponent of the plan. See his "Letter to Robert Owen,"
dated 13 May 1827, ibid., p. 114.
330 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
meetings in a day. The immigration to the place was great;
and the nucleus often met to receive members, and to deliberate
upon measures." A new style of dress was introduced — for
men, pantaloons tied at the ankle; for women, what the next
generation was to call the Bloomer costume. And, to the
disgust of the puritanical Paul Brown, "the dancing and the
instrumental music engrossed more of the energy of speculation
than the most important concerns. There must be a regular ball
once a week, and a concert once a week."6 In spite of continuing
discontent, New Harmony came closest to realizing the promise
of its name in March and April of 1826. And Maclure enjoyed
a brief period of optimistic and uninterrupted planning.
Maclure to Silliman, New Harmony, 16 March 18267
. . . We have been here scarcely two months, making a few
experiments of the effects of the new system upon our species.
From the obstinacy of old deep rooted habits, not much can be
expected from theorizing for so short a time upon subjects, with
respect to which, as regards nine tenths of mankind, only practice
can produce conviction. Still every thing considered, (both the
materials and opportunities,) we have succeeded better than we
had any reason to expect. . . .
8 Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 16, 18. From 15 to 21 April 1826 Karl
Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, was a visitor at New Harmony,
and the fullest account of community life during this period is that contained
in his Travels, translated in 1828 and conveniently reprinted in Lindley
(ed.), Indiana as Seen by Early Travelers, pp. 418-37. The Duke mentions
Madame Fretageot several times by name (pp. 432-36), and also gives a
description of a certain "Madam F , a native of St. Petersburg," who
"married an American merchant, settled there, and had the misfortune to
lose her husband three days after marriage" (p. 425). This description has
sometimes been mistakenly attached to Madame Fretageot. Actually
Madam F was the Mrs. Fisher who started out on the "boatload of
knowledge," but completed the trip by land in Owen's company. See
Donald Macdonald, Diaries, p. 334, and "Pelham Letters," p. 405. She was
apparently connected by her marriage with the family of Dr. Philip M. Price.
See Donald Macdonald, Diaries, p. 308, and Karl Bernhard, p. 425.
Dr. Price's eldest brother William married a Hannah Fisher, whose brother
may possibly have been the short-lived spouse of Madam F . See
[Eli K. Price], Centennial Meeting of the Descendants of Philip and Rachel
Price (Philadelphia, 1864), pp. 35, 37-38, 82.
7 Maclure, "Notice of Mr. Owen's Establishment, in Indiana," in
American Journal of Science, XI, 189-92.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 331
The obstinate prejudices of men against making any useful
or radical change . . . has, for a long time, prevented me from
putting in practice, what I would have called experimental farming
schools, for the education of the children of the productive classes :
and this sociable system of Mr. Owen, offering all the means and
materials for effecting the same reform amongst the same useful
class, I have joined him in all his undertakings, on this side of the
Atlantic, and we intend to carry them into execution, as far as
a considerable capital will permit. Already part of the boys' school
is so far organized that they make shoes for themselves, and will
soon do it for the whole community. They will likewise have
work-shops for tailors, carpenters, weavers, &c. in the school, all
of which trades will be alternately practiced, by way of recreation
from their mental labour of Arithmetic, Mathematics, Natural
History, &c. as a useful substitute for gymnastics ; to which will
be added agriculture and gardening. We have nearly 400 children
belonging to the society, besides strangers from the different parts
of the Union. The girls are taught the same things as the boys, by
Madam Fretageot, and are classed, alternately, to work in the
cotton and woollen mills, and in washing, cooking, &c. (for no
servants are permitted in the society, and every one must do
something for himself,) not working above half a day on any one
kind of labour, thereby alleviating the fatigue by variety. . . .
My experience does not permit me to doubt, that children, under
proper management, can feed and clothe themselves by the practice
of the best and most useful part of their instruction ; and in place of
being a burthen, they would be a help to all connected with them.
The schools here will be on such a scale, as to location, men of
talent, and perfection of machinery, as to constitute them the first
in the Union, for every species of useful knowledge. . . .
All children, as well as men, if not occupied in doing good,
will most probably be doing harm, either to themselves or
others. . . . None of our species can be too long kept at work ;
there is nothing more easy than by habit to turn all useful and
necessary occupations into an amusement, when life itself would
become a pastime.
At their festivities in April 1826 the New Harmonites
invented a cotillion which they called the "New Social System."
The reality they symbolized was hardly less fleeting than the
steps they danced. Whatever there had been of harmony had
vanished by May. For the third time in five months Owen
was faced with the necessity of reorganizing the community.
332 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
At this juncture William Maclure entered the discussion with
a communication to the Gazette recommending the division of
New Harmony according to the occupations of its members.
Maclure to the "New Harmony Gazette," 17 May 18268
. . . The thing most wanted is, to protect the industrious,
honest members against the unpleasant, mortifying sensation of
laboring for others that are either unable or unwilling to work
their proportion necessary to keep up the expenditure of the
society, and pay their debts. To accomplish this object it has been
tried, by individual reports of production, and making public the
number of hours each was occupied in a day; the practice of
which was rather invidious, and difficult impartially to be ex-
ecuted ; and even if it were possible to get correct returns, it was
liable to injustice; as one willing workman might do more in an
hour than another without the same good will or industry, would
do in four.
It is perhaps better to divide the community into departments
and occupations, allowing each to regulate the quantum that every
individual in the department or occupation ought to perform, only
fixing the aggregate quantity that the department or occupation
ought to produce, as their share of the amount of property neces-
sary to enable the society to fulfil their engagements. . . .
If, in consequence of the difficulties of ascertaining, or the
want of friendly feelings or confidence in each other, none of
the above methods were practicable, in the last resort every herring
must hang by its own head, and a division should be made into
different communities, as at No. 2 and 3 [Macluria and Feiba-
Peveli], and each department or occupation should engage to pay
for the part of the property they take for their use. . . .
This might not be so complete or extensive an example of
cooperative superiority, but would perhaps be much better than
running the risk of total failure, by attempting too much with a
population aggregated hastily; ... it would reduce the sum (that
each would be bound for the whole in one community) to an
amount more within the compass of their previous habits of
calculation, and bring the knowledge of each other within the
limits of confidence and fellow feeling.
A population must have been some time accustomed to the
social system, to be convinced that those who work with their
8 Volume I, p. 268. Signed M., the initial Maclure appended to all his
contributions.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 3tt
heads, or mental labor, are as productive as those who work with
their hands; and it is equally difficult to persuade those who are
not completely purged of their individual feelings of the old order
of society, to reconcile a mechanic, at one and a half, or two
dollars a day, to put himself on an equality with an agriculturist
at one fourth of a dollar a day. These evident bars to cooperative
union and equality ought to be removed, or so reduced by internal
regulations and divisions, as to lessen the obstruction . . . to . . .
practical union. . . .
Nor does the dividing them [the present population of this
place] into twenty or thirty associations bring them one iota nearer
the individual system, or remove them from the social ; as no occu-
pation can have any object to compete with another, while the con-
tract, which alone is the foundation of all their property, positively
prohibits any individual participation in the surplus profits. . . .
This division into departments and occupations is only made
to accomplish impartial equalization of labor, and reduce the
responsibility of payments within the sphere of the previous habits
of calculation — all the operations of the schools, music, dancing,
sociable intercourse, and all public or private amusements remain
upon the same footing of equal rights and duties as if the com-
munity had not been so divided.
Owen was apparently convinced by this reasoning, for on
28 May 1826 he asked the community to decide between the
two alternatives Maclure had suggested. According to Paul
Brown "two plans were proposed by Mr. Owen — the first
was, to have one community with different departments of
occupations, having a set of officers to each, as clerks, super-
intendents, &c. The other, to have four separate societies."9
The latter arrangement was voted, and before long three new
societies (for the number had been immediately reduced by
combination) were in process of formation — an Education
Society, an Agricultural and Pastoral Society, and a Mechanic
and Manufacturing Society.
The Education Society was the easiest to set going, for
9 Brown, Twelve Months, p. 19. The New-Harmony Gazette, I, 294-95
(7 June 1826), reported the first part of this meeting and promised to pub-
lish in the future the new regulations voted at the end, but it never fulfilled
this promise.
334 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Maclure's educational objectives were clear, the teachers and
men of science he had brought to New Harmony were a
relatively homogeneous group, and his financial resources were
adequate. Within ten days a lease was drawn up between
Owen and Maclure, by which the former turned over to the
Education Society some 900 acres of land and a number of
the New Harmony buildings, including the Hall (the brick
church of the Rappites), the Church or Steeple House (the
older wooden church of the Rappites), the former mansion of
Father Rapp (rechristened Community House No. 5), House
No. 2, where the boarding school was located, and the
granary or fort.
Though Owen and Maclure had each thrown his resources
freely into the venture at New Harmony, the lease executed
in May or June 1826 was apparently the first formal agreement
they had made concerning their respective financial responsi-
bilities. Even so, no real meeting of the minds occurred when
it was signed. Owen believed that he and Maclure were already
united in a full partnership and that the lease was a mere
incident in their larger relationship. Maclure, on the other
hand, emphatically denied that he was a partner of Owen's, and
consistently maintained thereafter that the lease defined his
total obligation, except for an understanding, which he freely
acknowledged, that made him liable for half of Owen's losses
at New Harmony up to a maximum of $10,000 — a "forfeiture"
he called it in his letters.
The lease was not recorded and the original is no longer
extant, but its terms become clear in the correspondence that
follows. Maclure agreed to pay Owen a total of $49,000 on
behalf of the Education Society.10 He advanced $24,500
immediately, and turned over an additional $10,000 in July
10 See Maclure's letter of 3 Jan. 1827, below, which agrees with Brown,
Twelve Months, p. 27. In his letter of 20 June 1826, however, Maclure uses
the figure $54,000. When he speaks of ultimately enabling the School
Society to pay Owen a total of $60,000 (as he does in his letters of 9 and
20 June, and 11 Aug. 1826, and in both letters of 21 Aug. 1826), Maclure
probably includes the "forfeiture" of $10,000 (mentioned in 9 July, 11 Aug.
1826, and both letters of 21 Aug. 1826).
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 335
or August.11 By January 1827 he had paid a total of $38,ooo,12
though the payments had originally been scheduled over a
period of seven years.13
Owen himself had made a down payment of $95,000 to
the Rappites for the entire New Harmony property,14 and was
obligated to pay two additional installments of $20,000 apiece
on the first of May in 1827 and 1828. 15 As the sequel will
show, Maclure actually made these payments to Rapp in April
1827, and turned over an additional $5,000 to Owen.16 This
apparently brought Maclure's total investment at New Harmony
to $82,000, exclusive of the sums he put into books, apparatus,
and specimens, and into the salaries of his associates.
Owen's total investment at New Harmony was probably
about $150,000, including the down payment of $95,000 on
the land and approximately $55,000 that came out of his own
pocket for supplies and other personal property furnished to
the inhabitants of the communities. The latter sum was a total
loss to Owen,17 but on the real estate he apparently broke even,
11 Maclure, 9 July, and 30 Aug. 1826, below. This agrees substantially
with Paul Brown's statement that Owen "had above 30,000 dollars paid
down to him by M'Clure." Twelve Months, p. 30.
12 Maclure, 3 Jan. 1827, below.
13 Ibid., which agrees with Brown, Twelve Months, p. 27.
"Maclure, 20 June 1826, below; Robert Owen to William Allen, 21
April 1825, as cited by Leopold, Robert Dale Owen, p. 29, n. 13.
15 Robert Owen, "Address ... in the City of Philadelphia, on . . . June
27, 1827," in New-Harmony Gazette, II, 353 (15 Aug. 1827) ; Maclure,
20 June, and 9 July 1826, below. The deed from Frederick Rapp to Owen,
dated 10 Dec. 1825 and recorded 18 Jan. 1826, states the consideration as
$125,000. Posey County, Indiana, "Deeds," liber D, p. 206. Leopold,
loc. cit., cites other documents, which yield the same figures. Apparently
$95,000 was for the real property and $40,000 for the personal property left
by the Rappites. See Owen, "Address . . . June 27, 1827," loc. cit.;
Maclure, 9 June 1826, below.
19 See p. 393 below. As shown there, n. 21, Rapp apparently allowed him
a discount of $1,000 for the advance payment.
17 During 1825 he subsidized the Preliminary Society for its living
expenses to the extent of at least $30,000, as even his bitter critic Paul Brown
admitted. Twelve Months, pp. 23-24. In January 1826 he brought with
him $15,000 worth of goods for the store, and these were gone by November.
See Maclure, 20 June, and 28 Nov. 1826, below. In addition he probably
336 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
for his holdings in 1832 were valued at approximately
$95,ooo,18 the very sum he had paid the Rappites.
It was this continual outpouring of funds by his colleague
that worried Maclure and that finally destroyed all his faith
in Owen's practical good sense. On 8 June 1826, however,
when Maclure left New Harmony for a four-months' trip
through Ohio and Kentucky, he did so in the confident belief
that he had put his financial relations with Owen on a clear-cut
basis, that his plans for the schools were going forward in
harmony with the rest of the community experiment, and that
the two new societies which he had proposed and which were
expended for supplies the $38,000 he received from Maclure in 1826. See
Maclure, 3 Jan., and 8 Feb. 1827, below. In the end, however, this was
Maclure's loss, not Owen's, for the sum was not regarded as part of the
consideration for the land that was ultimately deeded to Maclure. See p.
393, n. 21, below. A very conservative estimate of Owen's losses at New
Harmony in 1827 and thereafter would be $10,000. He stopped subsidizing
the living expenses of the community early in 1827, it is true, but he lost
much in litigation. In one case, James Purdon v. Robert Owen, for example,
he was ordered to pay $3,631.84. Posey County Circuit Court, "Complete
Record," liber B, pp. 501-9 (February term, 1828) ; and there were many
others. It is probable that the $4,500 he borrowed on 30 April 1828 and
later repaid went for losses at New Harmony. Pp. 393-94, n. 22, below. My
estimate of a total investment of $150,000 by Owen, of which $55,000 was
completely lost, should be compared with his son's statement, half a century
later, that Owen "expended in the purchase of the Harmony property, real
and personal, in paying the debts of the community during the year of its
existence, and in meeting his ultimate losses the next year by swindlers,
upwards of two hundred thousand dollars." Robert Dale Owen, Twenty-
Seven Years of Autobiography. Threading My Way (New York, 1874),
pp. 292-93. The extant evidence is too fragmentary to prove Robert Dale
Owen's estimate excessive, but I believe it is. It is almost certainly so if
the word "expended" signifies "totally lost" rather than "invested."
18 James M. Dorsey and Robert Dale Owen, "Rough Estimate of New
Harmony Real Estate, January 1832," MS. in Workingmen's Institute. This
values the property belonging to Robert Owen at $95,849.50 ; belonging to
Robert Dale and William Owen at $33,198.22; and belonging to [David]
Dale and Richard Owen at $15,160.00; a total of $144,207.72 still in the
hands of Owen and his sons. Penciled figures on the document give some-
what lower valuations. The land owned by Robert Dale and William Owen
had been conveyed to them by their father in return for their shares in the
New Lanark mills, which he liquidated in order to secure funds. See
R. D. Owen, Threading My Way (New York, 1874), p. 294.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 337
now in process of formation — the Agricultural and Pastoral,
and the Mechanic and Manufacturing — were to provide a
permanent and workable solution to the problem of communi-
tarian organization. His gradual disillusionment on all three
points is the principal theme of the letters he wrote Madame
Fretageot on his travels.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Mount Vernon, Indiana,
9 June 1826
Dear Madam,
We arrived here yesterday after 6 hours of a not disagreeable
travel. All well. One steam boat had gone down and one up the
River a few hours before our arrival, but one is expected down
today, . . . the River being sufficient for such boats to navigate,
having 6^ feet water in the shallowest places. So it is probable
that we shall find little difficulty in proceeding, which may dis-
appoint you a little in your expectations of having Francis [Frances
Wright] so soon amongst you. But you must wright to her,
particularly if you make any progress in your organization, which
I'm affraid will be no easy task, particularly Mr. O's part of
it. Everything I have heard since I left Harmony diminishes
the little confidence I had in the materials he has to work upon, and
you cannot be too cautious of chusing your members, avoiding
as much as possible those who have contracted indolent, grumbling
and corrupt habits under the wretched government of the pre-
liminary Society.
You will have to check P[hiquepal] in his rage for legislation
and regulation. Let all your practice arise out of experience, and
all your conduct be in strict union, the principles of the System
being adhered too, never to attemp to teach what the children
don't comprehend and in the exact ratio of their understanding
it. The how and when you begin is immaterial and not worth
the disputing about. . . . The savage state of the children in
Harmony has been much in their favor, and the only class hurt
by it is perhaps the girls from 15 to 20, whom you are prudent and
wise to avoid as setting bad examples to your infants. . . .
When you find occasion caution Mr. O. against spending much
more money upon his present population, and not to join my name
in any of the Bonds he may take, as all my property is devoted
to schools as the only way of benifiting mankind. What the
schools will be enabled to pay him . . . , nearly 60,000 dollars, is
nearly 15,000 dollars more than the half of all he paid Rapp for
338 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
the real property. The personal and other expenses was wasted
before I met with him in the United States, of course cannot be
considered as anything to me. I leave it to your management that
he may be aware of what he has to depend upon for his future
payments, and not spend the 30,000 dollars I shall have to pay him
for the schools in making or purchasing (like the tobacco &c.) long
before he can properly [ ?] make any use [ ?] of it.
I hope your community will practice the true friendly and
fellow feeling towards all the others and give them an example
of what ought to exist in the Social order, tho I have not the
smallest idea that any of them for many years will be sufficiently
enlightened to reciprocate. The advantage taken on the land is
a proof how little they understand of all the theories of Mr. 0[wen]
which till now must be considered as mere theories. I'm glad
you'r independent of them. The general opinion is that Natural
Philosophy, Chymistry, Natural History &c. are perfectly useless
and wastfe] of money to the communities, and I'm not certain
if P. is not at the bottom of that idea, as all of them are rather out
of his road having never paid much attention to any of them and
cannot value any quality in another he does not possess himself. . . .
I remain yours sincerely
Wm Maclure
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Cincinnati, 20 June 1826
Dear Madam,
I have already written to you twice some hints that occurred
to me . . . We have given an order . . . for books, copperplates
&c. wanted for the publications of Lesueur & Say's works. . . . The
order given by Dr. Troost for glass ware, furnaces &c. — all of
which can be got in this country for the freight they would cost
from London — we have suppressed because Chymistry is one of
those sciences we cannot expect to make any figure in at first, and
must be confined to the Kitchen, Brewhouse, and other things of
immediate use, as we will be quite unfit for a long time to make
any speculation that will obtain either reputation or credit for the
School any where, the Chymistry in Neef's Sketch going as far
as utility dictates. Most of the apparatus ordered by Troost, in
addition to what we have already, will not probably be usefull for
a long time.
I gave a hint of keeping all the minerals that came from
Phila[delphi]a, both those packed by Phiquepal & others, separate
from Troost's cabinet, and give the charge of them to Lesueur to
be divided amongst the Schools that will no doubt becom estab-
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 339
lished in this country, likewise giving reasons for wishing as few
of the materials lent to Phiquepal or bought with my money going
under his name as his individual property, that the Schools might
not be deprived of them by the whim or caprice of one so full of
all extravagant fanceys. Dr. Troost is a good natured, well
meaning man, but his better half has perhaps too many religious
prejudices founded on ignorance, which has an immense influence
on the actions of any married man at Troost's age, but all this is
cntre nous and those you can place confidence in.
I have not yet the exact state of the Yellow Springs. (My leg
confines me to the house tho getting better slowly. It requires
to be kept up on a chair). From all I can learn, there has been
much money spent by mismanagement of the old community, just
as the preliminary society wasted for Mr, Owen, which expenditure
of property any new community that may be established will not
pay, nor perhaps will the members to the old community be equaly
willing as Mr. O. to suffer the loss, which will be one bar to making
a new community, without which I cannot interfere. . . . Unless
I can do something on a secure footing I will do nothing ; tho the
locality is better calculated to succeed under proper selection and
do more good to the cooperative system than any result than can
possibly come from the heterogenous materials of Harmony, spoiled
as they have always been by the force of money, which has
produced nothing but waste and destruction of property. It's
probable all that Mr. O. will ever realize of his property under
such management is the 50 or 60,000 dollars the School Community
will be enabled to pay him. Shall be glad that event prove me
a false profit but every new fact that occurs confirms my opinions
formed on the place.
You must be entirely independent of the other societies and
keep your accounts with all of them short, as well as with the
store. Let nothing run on in the loose, irregular manner all has
been done formerly. No fortune however great is sufficient to
stand such dilapidation. The store, unless differently managed
to what it has been, will be the ruin of Mr. O's pecuniary inde-
pendence, and then all his hopes must be anihilated, as he has done
nothing in this country but by the power of money. When deprived
of that his influence or management will be trif flingly small. . . .
The Harmony finances will stand probably as under, if well
managed, viz.
340 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Sold to No. 2. 1300 acres good land . . . $4,680.
Sold to No. 3. 1400 acres of the best land . . . 7,000
Sold to the School Community. 900 acres of the land
most worn out as being oftenest ploughed up near
the town, with all the most useless houses . . . 54,000.
The rest of the property, if valued at the same
price as that to the Schools, may amount to
upwards of 110,000
Cost :
175,000.
Mr. O. paid to Rapp
95,000
To pay . . . [i.e., still
owing to Rapp]
40,000
Goods put into store
from Phila[delphi]a
15,000 150,000
The amount that may be sure if well managed 25,000
But much reformation will be necessary in the ceconomy, care and
attention to pence or cents. The only thing taken care of in the
Harmony industry is the great sums that take care of themselves,
except perhaps the sparing, not to say nigardly, ceconomy to all
that relates to Schools. Let me know how you come on that. . . .
I'm not sure if you can have much aid in the management of
your affairs from any one except perhaps [Joseph] Applegath
& Robert [Dale Owen], if he could be joined to a Rib of talent
and good sense, but if flutering about the feminine trif fles of the
spoiled children at Harmony his utility will be paralized. . . . Take
warning from the faults of Mr. O. and his loose and incorrect mode
of doing business. Keep short accounts and frequent settlements.
Never put off till tomorrow what can be done to day ; and always
recolect that foresight is the chief superiority we have over the
other animals, and that a biped without foresight is scarce above
the par of a quadruped.
Mr. Say has wrote to his engraver and printer to induce them
to join the community, and you would perhaps do well to get some
choice of your mecanics, not to be forced to take those that have
been spoiled at Harmony. . . . Always remmember that those
who sign your constitution to work for victuals & cloths can cost
you much more than 20 to 30 dollars a year and must be useless
indeed if they are not worth that. . . .
The Yellow Springs Community, with whose troubled af-
fairs Maclure was forced to concern himself, was one of the
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 341
independent communities established under the spell of Owenism
in 1825-26, but without Owen's direct participation or support.
This particular one had been organized in Cincinnati and had
begun community life in July 1825 on a heavily mortgaged
farm at Yellow Springs near Xenia in Greene County, Ohio, the
present site of Antioch College. By January 1826 its difficulties
were so menacing to the prestige of the Owenite movement that
Robert Owen had gone there to look into its affairs. Now
Maclure was continuing the investigation, such having been one
of the purposes of his trip away from New Harmony. In late
June he went to Yellow Springs and on 3 July attended a public
meeting of the members, witnessing such a display of irreconcil-
able antagonisms that he despaired of a solution.19 Behind
this factionalism Maclure detected the machinations of a
certain Mr. Brown, almost certainly to be identified with
the Paul Brown who played a similarly disruptive role in
later months at New Harmony.20
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Columbus, Ohio, 9 July 1826
. . . People begin to tire of preaching about communities, and
not a few think that he that preaches best knows least of the
practice, of which they are anxious to have a specimen . . .
19 In addition to the passages printed herein, Maclure discussed the af-
fairs of Yellow Springs in letters to Madame Fretageot on 16 and 24 June,
21 July, 29 Aug., and 19 Sept. 1826. The Ohio sources concerning Yellow
Springs are utilized in William A. Galloway, History of Glen Helen
(Columbus, Ohio, 1932), pp. 47-53. References to it among New Harmony
sources include : Donald Macdonald, Diaries, p. 335 ; Pears Papers, p. 23 ;
"Pelham Letters," pp. 374, 400; and New-Harmony Gazette, I, 71, 159
(23 Nov. 1825, 8 Feb. 1826). See also Niles' Weekly Register, XXVIII,
336; XXIX, 24, 133 (23 July, 10 Sept., 29 Oct. 1825); John H. Noyes,
History of American Socialisms (Philadelphia, 1870), pp. 59-65; and
E. S. Dills, History of Greene County, . . . Ohio (Dayton, 1881), p. 665.
20 Though Paul Brown arrived in New Harmony on 2 April 1826, his
autobiographical Twelve Months in New-Harmony does not begin to be
detailed and circumstantial until 28 May, hence he may well have visited
Ohio in April or May. Maclure in his letter of 29 Aug. 1826, below, connects
Mr. Brown with the community at Nevilsville, and Paul Brown's interest
in that project is revealed in his own Twelve Months, p. 89. Moreover
Mr. Brown's extreme position in favor of absolute community of property,
mentioned by Maclure in the letter just cited, was identical with Paul
Brown's. See p. 356, n. 32, below.
342 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Mr. Applegath will no doubt get an assignment to me on the
loan for the 24,500$ already advanced, and another when he gives
the 10,000 promissory notes I left with him.
In the book containing the list of books you'll find a paper
containing some of the reasons why I withdraw myself from
the responsibility of acts over which I had no control, for in all
Mr. O's money operations I thought different and disaproved of
them, but was told unless he was allowed his way he could not
act, to which at last I so far dissented as to tell him I would back
out at the risk of loosing the 10,000 dollars, but that loss must be
on transactions that had taken place since our agreement, and that
I could not consider the money wasted by the preliminary society
or expended in any other way as making a part of his advance, to
which he only said he was sorry for it, as he would have confined
his plans to his own capital, which I told him he was not too late
to do, as he had no engagement to pay but to Rapp next year and
the year after, which to enable him to do I advanced the whole the
School Community owes him, selling my 6% stock to get only
the promise 5%. Now I shall most probably have yet 20,000$ to
pay him, which is just the sum he has to pay Rapp next May, and
I have been thinking it would be better for both to retain that
sum untill Rapp's bond comes due, for perhaps if I pay him
before, he will let it slide thro his fingers, as he has most of his
money since he came to this country, by giving his confidence to
those no wise or prudent man would trust.
One of his confidents, Mr. Brown, came to the Yellow Springs,
and they blame him for fomenting the rebelion of 7 or 8 of the
old members of the former community who have seized upon
hogs, plows, carts &c, and one time pretended to keep possession
of the land, and do actualy claim all the produce. He likewise
endeavoured to injure poor Caleb Lowns by propagating that he
was rejected at Harmony and ought not to be admitted at the
Yellow Springs. He is, to say no more of him, a marplot, and
I fear O. will find it when perhaps too late. . . .
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Springfield, Ohio,
21 July 1826
. . . My native indolence, that was rather augmented than
diminished by my destructive classical education, forced me to
judge of great men and things by small circumstances, and to
believe that straws showed how the wind blowed. It has been so
with my judgement of Mr. O., and hitherto events have proved
too well the correctness of my foresight not to encourage me in
MACLURE-ERETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 343
supposing that I may still foresee the right and the wrong that
may result from his situation and management, leaving to your
prudence and management in communicating or not as you see
a proper occasion.
I suppose, tho I know nothing, that he has divided the different
societies of mecanics, agriculturalists &c.21 That the store, a
property of nearly 30,000 dollars, he ought to sell it to none, but
keep it in his own hand as well as the tavern, both of which would
only spoil the community he would attach it to, and raise the
jealousy of all the others. Besides he will require the control of
the store and tavern to regain part of what he has lost and to do
justice to the other small communities I suppose he intends to
establish on his lands, which is what he ought to limmit his ambition
to at present, as not only the safest and most ceconomical, but
likewise the most expeditious and certain way of furthering the
sweep of his system.
It's realy astonishing how the hopes and expectations of the
friends of the system in this country has been disappointed by the
height their imaginations were carried to by his forgetting that
there was at least one century between the scenes his fancy was
painting and the present. They have fallen into reality from such
a height that the shock has paralized for the present all exertions,
tho the state of society, price of land and labor such that 20,000
dollars judiciously employed would forward the system more in
this healthy country than all he has expended on communities at
Harmony can or probably will do with the materials he has to
work upon. Fine mixed prairie and woodland can be bought at
1 dollar pr acre, and 1,000 dollars would suffice for building, so
that communities could be established for 2,000 dollars, each with
a much greater certainty of being repaid than any of those (except
the Schools) he will establish at Harmony, for the necessary
industry of building not only accustoms them to labor, but makes
them carefull of what they make. Had the inhabitants of Harmony
produced all the property Mr. O. bought in it, they could not
possibly looked on and even helped to make it run to ruin. We are
all egotists fond of our own as Mr. O. No fault to that, unless
we mistake the road and crablike march backward as all short-
sighted egotists always do. . . .
21 Actually the constitution of the New Harmony Agricultural and
Pastoral Society was not adopted until 30 July 1826. New-Harmony Gazette,
I, 362-63 (9 Aug. 1826). On 20 Aug. both it and the Mechanic Society were
mentioned as already in existence. Ibid., I, 390 (30 Aug. 1826).
344 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Springfield, Ohio,
31 July 1826
... I have been long convinced the great error of Mr. Owing
[sic] is following up his sanguin enthusiazm with the force of
money, thinking to produce a revolution by money that can only
be effected by the slow and snail paced conviction of the multitude
for whose interest alone his system is contrived. It is the height
of absurdity to suppose that it can have the countenance or support
of any of the influential part of society. On the contrary, it would
be the greatest imprudence not to expect every opposition, persecu-
tion & detraction that ingenuity can invent. Mr. O. has mistaken
his own motives, and is therefore deceived in judging of the
motives of others. He as the first founder of the practice (for
the theory is old enough) has an infinitely superior stimulant to
exertion than he has left to any that may follow him on the same
road. Nor does he allow the proper weight to envy, which I could
perceive was the main source of the opinions of most of his most
intimate friends in London and else where, tho I believe to
themselves unknown. . . .
Back in Springfield, Maclure began to hear more regularly
from New Harmony. Letters of Madame Fretageot (now
lost) reached him about the first of August and gave him the
news to the middle of July. The most spectacular occurrence
had been Owen's "Oration Containing a Declaration of Mental
Independence," delivered on the Fourth of July, the fiftieth
anniversary of that earlier Declaration which Owen believed
he was now bringing to full fruition. "Are you prepared," he
asked his hearers, "to imitate the example of your ances-
tors ? . . . Are you prepared to achieve a Mental Revolution,
as superior in benefit and importance to the first revolution, as
the mental powers of man exceed his physical powers?" With-
out waiting for a reply, Owen proclaimed his own independence
of "the remaining mental bonds which for so many ages have
grievously afflicted our nature" :
"I now Declare, to you and to the world, that Man, up
to this hour, has been, in all parts of the earth, a slave to a
Trinity of the most monstrous evils that could be combined
to inflict mental and physical evil upon his whole race.
"I refer to Private, or Individual Property — absurd
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 345
AND IRRATIONAL SYSTEMS OF RELIGION and MARRIAGE,
FOUNDED ON INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY COMBINED WITH SOME ONE
OF THESE IRRATIONAL SYSTEMS OF RELIGION."22
Intended by Owen as a comprehensive challenge to con-
servatism, his discourse had the desired effect of rousing
nation-wide discussion. Never one to count the cost of his
utterances, Owen hardly foresaw the disastrous consequences
of thus cementing the alliance between all the potential enemies
of the New Harmony experiment, of strengthening the de-
fenders of the existing social order by bringing to their
assistance the forces of religion and the powerful taboos with
which sexual conventions are ringed about. Even Maclure,
who, better than Owen, sensed the dangers in such temerity, was
at first disposed to praise the Oration.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Springfield, Ohio,
2 August 1826
. . . I'm rejoiced to learn of the community forming on the
Prairies23 on three accounts : first the release their absence will
bring to the Societies of New Harmony, 2dly They will multiply
the experiments on Community System, and thirdly they have a
greater chance of contentment and happiness when their self love
and vanity is flatered with being the founders, which will likewise
support them in suffering the necessary privations. . . .
I'm likewise glad that [Stedman] Whitwell24 is going to
England, as in his present temper of mind, excited by disappointed
pride, ambition & revenge, aided by his electioneering habits of
intrigue, cunning & declamation, he would have been a thorn in
all your sides individualy by propagating every thing that could
hurt your feelings and injuring the community by intising every
22 New-Harmony Gazette, I, 330 (12 July 1826).
23 Probably the Agricultural and Pastoral Society. See footnote 21
above and p. 360, n. 37, below.
24 Stedman Whitwell, architect, had come from England with Owen in
November 1825 and was a passenger on the "boatload of knowledge." He
was elected Superintendent of General Economy when the Community of
Equality was organized, he devised the system of nomenclature according
to which Feiba-Peveli was named, and he began the elaborate meteorological
record at New Harmony that Gerard Troost continued. See Donald
Macdonald, Diaries, pp. 307, 332-34; Nezv-Harmony Gazette, I, 175, 199,
226-27, 272 (22 Feb., 15 March, 12 April, 17 May 1826).
346 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
member that could be influenced to leave it. But give the Devil
his due, he never hinted the smallest complaint to me against
Mr. Owen nor did any observation of his on the faults of the
preliminary society either add or diminish the opinion I formed
respecting 9/10 of them being very unfair materials for an
impartial experiment of the sweep of the System. Time will show
how many of them turns out well. When Whitwell returns from
England he will be quite changed, will loose much of that aristo-
cratic hauteur and arbitrary mode of commanding. The most
effectual cure for the selfcreated importance of our mushroom
aristocracy is a visit to that paradize of every species of power
and privilledge, Britain.
I hope you will not give Troost the book with all the papers,
which was only meant for your own and friends' use, containing
my reasons in full for withdrawing from any part of the profits
or loss of the Community System under the management of
Mr. O., under a positive conviction that my money could not
advance under his management one iota the System and that the
abundance of money was the cause of all his errors, which I still
think, and that the capital he has the command of at present is fully
more than can be of any use to him or his System. You are wrong
to suppose that my opinions can be of any use to him, tho I have
been giving them fully thro you. If there is an ultimate loss by the
purchase of Harmony, which I don't think probable if judiciously
managed, my agreement may perhaps induce me to pay half as
far as 10,000$, tho I have not had nor cannot now have any control
or participation in the management. Our opinions, from the
difference of surrounding circumstances, would only class [clash]
and imperil both our plans. My money must all go to forward
schools but which I shall establish in the Community System and
attach them all to some one of the communities formed on
his principles.
His 4th of July oration is all true and told in a masterly
manner, tho I could have wished it had been defferred untill next
July to allow a little more time for the flambeau of reason to
throfw] light into the dark corner of society, where the abuses
of all ages yet known has thrown the best and most usefull mem-
bers. For the great mass of productive laborers must be the
support and only protection to his system, and to endeavour to
force it by the power of money or otherwise beyond the point of
the thorough conviction of their interest will advance it nothing.
And when the class of productive laborers are sufficiently in-
formed to see the advantage they are to derive from it, they will
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 347
require nothing but what they possess in this country with the
greatest freedom, the use of their arms.
The only part of the establishment that may be hurt by this
bold discourse may be that part which the school community expect
from strangers by the education of their children, tho it may be
said that the discourse contains only the private opinions of
Mr. Owen and that the schools are independent of him and teach no
species of religion, leaving the minds of youth a piece of blanc paper
on which their priests or parents may write what they please. . . .
You must try to manage the women, for they seem to rule the
men in all the events that have crossed you. Take care not to
offend their vanity, and let example preceed precept. . . .
I'm intirely of your opinion that amusement is, or ought to
be, the wages of Labor, and that your reunions at the Hall are
the best, cheapest and most effectual method of creating [ ?] that
friendly feeling and smoothing down that vulgar asperity into
all the lovable and aimable habit which distinguishes the true
friend of his species from the hypocrite or pretender. . . .
Has there been any of the inhabitants left out of all the
Communities, and what is come of them? . . .
The storm raised by Owen's "Declaration of Mental In-
dependence" gained in fury with each passing week. Before
the end of the summer Maclure found it necessary to dissociate
himself more sharply from responsibility for Owen's statement.
This he did in a letter to a friend near Philadelphia, excerpts
from which eventually found their way into the newspapers.
Maclure to an Unnamed Gentleman, [Louisville],
20 September 182625
I did all I could to bridle the impetuosity of the enthusiastic
reformer. But, after all, what have the three positions to do with
the co-operative system? not quite so much as fungus that grows
at the root of a tree, has with the health or prosperity of the tree.
They are the opinions of one individual, Mr. Owen, who is, per-
haps, the only one within five hundred miles of him, who thinks
them fit or necessary in the present state of society, and have
no more effect on the inhabitants of New Harmony, than they
have upon the citizens of Philadelphia. — Mr. Owen in all his
23 Philadelphia National Gazette and Literary Register, 24 Oct. 1826
(triweekly edition), p. 4. For references to the publication of this letter,
see Maclure, 24 Feb. 1827, below.
348 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
speculative opinions is no more to the communities of Harmony,
than the opinions of any other individual that would take the same
pains to communicate them. All the communities have bought
property of Mr. Owen, and except that they have to pay him at
the end of seven years, have no more either mental or corporeal
dependence on him than they have on any other individual. The
school community is relieved from the obligation of paying
Mr. Owen for their property, by a loan that I made them, to free
them from every appearance of mental or physical connection, and
take them from under the controul of any of his plans and schemes
that might appear to him necessary to carry into effect his grand
projects, with the success of which the schools have no more to
do, than they have with any other improvement by facilitating,
through the medium of information and knowledge, the ameliora-
tion of the destinies of mankind, all of which we expect to
accomplish, by giving a more useful practical education at a far
cheaper rate than can be got in any part of the Union. One
hundred dollars per annum for clothing, boarding and education
is the present price, and as pecuniary profits are not the object
of any of the professors, it is more probable it will be cheaper
than dearer.
Even before Owen's attack upon conventional marriage as
part of the "hydra of evils" from which men must declare their
mental independence, baseless rumors of sexual infidelity at
New Harmony had been circulated by the opponents of the
community. They reached the ears of Mrs. Joseph Sistaire,
with whom Maclure had boarded in New York, and whose
three daughters (including the future Mrs. Thomas Say) were
now at New Harmony. On 4 August 1826, accordingly,
Maclure wrote her a reassuring letter from Springfield, which
was eventually published in the Philadelphia United States
Gazette and reprinted on 5 October in the triweekly Washington
National Intelligencer. A week after sending the letter he
summarized its contents for Madame Fretageot.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Springfield, Ohio,
11 August 1826
From the state of misery, fear and tribulation manifested by
Mrs. Sistare in most of her letters I was induced (in hopes of
aleviating part of her troubles) to volunteer a long letter assuring
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 349
her of the morality of the inhabitants of Harmony being more
correct than in any part of the Earth I ever was in, touching on
that pivot of all the lyes, the sexual intercourse. I expected that
the married were more faithfull and the young more chaste than
in any part of the Globe I had visited ; much about sobriety,
order . . . and friendly conduct &c. I contrasted the simplicity,
inocence and moral conduct of the members of our Society with
the extravagance, debauchery and vice of New York and the other
large towns of the Union that I know by experience, and finished
by a tirade on the uncertainty of depending on commerce and
wondering what would become of the legions of bankrupt
merchants and idle clerks that would be let loose on society for that
our roads was not rich enough to provide for them &c.
I stated to Robert last post that the prospectus must come
from you first. You must consult and make it as concize as
possible, perhaps something in this form, viz.
M. Fretageot & assistants, infants school from 2 to 5 . . .
Joseph Neef & family & assistants, from 5 to 12 . . .
C. A. Lesueur, designing [ ?] &c.
T. Say, Zoology &c.
Dr. Troost, Mineralogy, Chymistry &c.
giving a short sketch of what each means to teach, and finishing
all with an account of the local improvements & other means of
farming, gardening &c, which you possess. And when it is once
in the Harmony Gazette we must try to induce our agents to get
it put into the other gazettes, such as Clark & Green here, & Reuben
Haines & others at Philadelphia, some of our friends at New
York &c, to give it as great publicity as possible. Might get some
one to publish it at New Orleans &c. . . .
Tis unlucky that you have not a substitute for Phiquepal, but
one must be found. From his physical weakness and moral
uncertainty it will not be prudent to suspend the school every time
any derangement of his faculties takes place. I fear he will
never be perswaded to fit any of his pupils to take his place, and
the only thing to be done is to enable every head of the occupation
to carry on the business without a director, which, as far as the
mecanical arts, will not be difficult. Mathematics, Natural
Phylosophy &c. Neef or some [ ?] one of the Gentlemen might
supply for an hour or two pr day — all that will be counted in their
sciences. We will be short of teachers if we cannot induce some of
our scientific friends from Europe or else where to join us. . . .
I'm glad to learn that your house will soon be finished and
that your general eating room and kitchen will soon be in opera-
350 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
tion, without which you cannot establish any equality in food. And
it will also tend much to equality of knowledge from the sociable
intercourse that may take place if mixed with judgement, a strata
of common sence and reason between two stratas of ignorance. . . .
You are mistaken about Whitwell in the smallest manner
raising or creating any dryness between me and O., for there is
not the smallest difference or dryness between us, only I see the
impossibility of money at present doing any good to his population.
And what I have learned of the different other Communities
confirms me that industry alone can make the system succeed, and
his wealth has spoiled all the members of the preliminary Society.
Had I seen that before I made an agreement with him I would
not have made it and now must draw back while I have anything
to carry on my School improvements, even if I should pay the
forfeiture. I am glad to hear he keeps the store in his own hands.
It is the only way he can ever get back any of the money he has
put into it, as I have no confidence in the payments from any of
the communities except the Schools, and even then, unless I
advanced it, the money would most probably be long of comming
in. It was on purpose that he might not be pinched that I advanced
the 60,000 for the Schools, which I can afford without interfering
with my other plans. But farther I cannot go, nor is it his interest
to expend more, but settle small societies with a few hundred
dollars. He cannot expect any returns from the members of the
preliminary society. But I shall be glad to be wrong. I wrote
you this in some of the letters you have received to prevent him
depending on it, but perhaps they are so scrawled you cannot
have time to read them. . . .
The communities of adults seems to fall off in all quarters. The
class for whose interest it immediately was begun, from ignorance
and prejudices don't support them, and the classes against whose
interest they appear to militate are as industrious as ants and work
underground like moles. Schools, after all, are the only mode
an individual has to benefit or improve mankind. Think that our
Schools will do well, but we must not be in a hurry. Take time. If
I could think I could be of any use to you I would come immedi-
ately, but all I can do for you I can as well do here as with you, and
perhaps in travelling I can do more to fill your schools than any
good I could do with you, for it is not the time to push the
Community of adults. 1 dollar some years hence will go further
than 100 dollars now. Never be in a hurry. Mr. 0[wen] ought
to take time and not expend his money, for his property in England
is not perhaps worth 1/4 of what it was when he left it.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 351
I have so far lost the little confidence I had in adults or parents
that I believe no good system of education can have a fair tryal
but with orphans, and when I come home we shall consult on the
best mode of taking 50 or 100, for the blindness and ignorance
of most, even in this free country, is astonishing. . . .
P.S. I shall remain here 8 or 10 days and afterwards go to
Cincinnati by way of Zenia. . . .
On the same day that Maclure was describing the prospectus
that Madame Fretageot should prepare, she was writing him
from New Harmony of events that were seriously affecting
the schools. The two newly formed societies had decided not
to pay tuition to the Education Society and had withdrawn
their children. At a meeting in the New Harmony Hall,
according to Paul Brown, "Robert Dale Owen, who was then
superintendent general of the education society, stood up, and
addressing the people, made demand of certain stipulated [or
understood] pay to be advanced for the tuition of the other
societies' children; alleging it was impossible without it for
them to exist as a society. . . . The farmers or pastorals
determined to withdraw their children from the boarding
school, but were willing to pay for the tuition they had received.
The mechanics refused to pay at all, and thenceforth their
children were considered as withdrawn, and their attendance
stopped."20 This situation Madame Fretageot reported to
Maclure in the only letter of hers for the year that is in the
collection.
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, New Harmony,
11 August 182627
Your letter dated 24th of July received. I am very glad that
our letters are arrived in your hand. Mr. Owen['s] speach or
declaration will produce much excitation but it will no doubt open
the eyes of a great many and be useful to the progress of truth.
28 Brown, Tivelve Months, pp. 34-36 ; the brackets are his. The date is
not clear in Brown's narrative, but from Madame Fretageot's letter it appears
that the decision was made early in August, prior to the completion of
Owen's series of discourses on education, discussed below.
27 The letter bears the date of 11 July, but the first sentence makes it
clear that this is an error for August.
352 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
People at first is strucked with new ideas but soon begin to reflect
on the subject and conviction follows.
We are now under the necessity of returning the children of
the Communities' Mecanics and farmer [s] to their parents after
having calculated that our expense amounted to such height and that
all our members were occuppied exclusively to the schools, without
any return either in money or good from the said Communities.
Also that the children under Neef['s] direction are making
progress in every kind of bad habit on account of Neef's sickness
and the poor management [of] his wife, that as a housekeeper
is the least calculated to be at the head of such an establishment,
where order and ecconomy must be the two first principle to be
put in practice with the stricktest attention. Then as the number
of our children, with those whose parents who are willing to
pay their pension will raise to about 80. Resolved that they will
be put under my care in the house No. 5. That the boys above
12 will be under the direction of Robert Dale [Owen]. We said
first as long as Phiquepal's sickness will last ; but this morning
the said Ph., about 2 hours before his returning to the Prairies,
came to tell me that his 3 boys, Falque, Amedee and Alexis, were
not to be comprised in such arrangements, that they would remain
by themselves in the Steeple house without any other direction. I
observed to him that in a place called community of equality, and
added, as his sickness was in his brain more than in his body, I
could easily calculate that it would be a long one, and that I could
say that if he had any desire to proceed what he had begun he
would certainly be able to do it, and that his children shall not be
treated differently than any of the others. He took such violent
aller [ ?] of passion that he abused me with his tongue as much
as he could, and from thence he went [to House] No. 328 where
he continued on the same topic and put the Whole in such a
confusion that I suppose they were frightened and said that the
boys were to remain according the wish of that fool. This
particulars have just been related to me by Mr. Applegath who
says that he had not the patience of remaining longer in the room
where he was abusing me without restraint.
Now it is to be decided that he will have nothing more to
[sic] here ; for my resolution in keeping the children will be
followed the same, and that the bad feelings that he has raised
28 House No. 5 was the old Rapp Mansion, destroyed by fire in 1844,
which stood on the northwest corner of what is now Church and Main
streets. The Steeple House was the frame church of the Rappites, built in
1816 and taken down in 1836. House No. 3 was the Tavern, still standing.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 353
against me among the members of our community will soon
disappear. It is just like the waves of the sea when raised by
a storm against a rock may for a moment sully it with their
foams but regain soon its appearance in showing its solidity. It
would be necessary that your return be as speedily as possible, on
account of the property in the hands of P., as I never told him
in full your intention concerning it, because there was time enough
as long as his stay here was, as I suppose, of longer duration, and
that he will no doubt make much noise about it. I suppose your
presence necessary ; in all case I will do what will appear to me
the most just. You must also know that I do not suppose he has
much money. In case he would undertake a voyage this must be
considered ; tho' I think he is unfit as a member in our community,
he may be more or less useful any where else, and cannot remain
without means. . . .
I am really sorry that Applegath leaves us. He is really
a man of buseness and of activity. And that comes from an
uncorrect idea of things. If he had been acquainted with the
true state of a community, with all the thousand obstacles that
ignorance throws in the way, he would have calculated them
before hand and not be disturbed in meeting them. This is most
the case of human mind, the result of false speculation arising
from the ignorance of things the most useful to us. . . .
In his letter of n August 1826 Maclure had rejoiced that
Owen planned to keep the New Harmony store in his own
hands. The radicals in the community took a different view,
however, accusing Owen of being "willing to shift into the
characters of a retailer and tavern keeper, to save by nine-penny
and four-pence-half-penny gains, after the manner of pedlars,
the money which he had lost, probably 30,000 dollars, to keep
the community fund good." In response to such pressure, "the
tavern was sold or hired to the farming society, and the store
divided, Owen taking one part of it, and . . . the mechanics'
society the other," according to Paul Brown.29 This arrange-
ment satisfied no one, as the reports that soon reached
Maclure made clear.
28 Twelve Months, pp. 24, 25.
354 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Cincinnati,
[18] -21 August 182630
We got here today the 18 August and found Mr. Hillbourn, the
shoe maker, ready to set out with all the things ordered for the
School Community, by whom the present is sent. Found the
Harmony Gazette of the 2 August but no letters, tho young
[William Creese] Pelham, I believe a member of the School
Community, came here two days ago and is gone to Zanesville
on business. . . . He brought some account of your mecanical
Community being very disatisfied because Mr. Owen did not give
them the whole of the store in place of the half. And Fm rather
of opinion in giving them the half he has given them what will
prevent them from doing any thing for themselves untill they
have spent the whole, and will totally prevent the store being of
the smallest use to the other Societies. But I suppose it was
a bonus to try to satisfy them, as the Tavern was to attemp
to please the pastorals ; in both of which he will most probably
fail as completely as he has failed in all his attemps to benifit
the hetrogenus mass he has gathered together.
But you may say it's none of our business ; he has a right to
do with his own property what he pleases. True, but when I see
a friend persevering in throwing away his property (which it must
be evident to all that has observed the nature of the materials
he has at Harmony) defeats all his own plans and good intentions,
one cannot help mentioning. At the same time I shall be glad if
events prove I'm a false profit. Both the Tavern and store he
should have kept in his own hands as a check upon the avarice of
the speculative mass he has had to deal with and has yet. Am
af fraid he will preach to the winds. They will hear him and flatter
him as long as they can get money from him. When that is done
all is gone. I shall do all I can for the success of the Schools, and
can only hint at the necessity you'r under of having little to do
with the other two communities but to give a good education to
their children and get in return what is necessary to keep up
the establishment. . . .
I have a much worse opinion of the preliminary society since
I have heard of the various tricks they used to obtain orders
on the store for what they never performed or had the least
intention of performing. . . .
Your Gazette is all to one tune, which people begin to tire
30
Dated the 21st, but begun, as the opening states, on the 18th.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 355
of. It would be better to vary it a little, if any of your scriblers
were capable. Having heard so much theory and seen so little, and
which little not the best, practice, many conceive it will all end in
smoke like many other theories. . . .
I did not conjecture that Mr. O. was quite so amourous as the
stories make him. The wives of the greatest part of those that
have left you lately have declared to their husbands that it was in
consequence of the freedom that Mr. O. took with them that they
could not think of remaining under such dreadful risk of their
virtue. This, beat up with the discourse on the antient mode of
mariage, forms a nostrum that gives currency to all the stories
about indiscriminate intercourse and all things being in common.
The lyes that are circulating would make one believe that Harmony
is to be made the scape goat of the whole western country, and all
the calumny & scandal on this side the Aliganies is to be fixed
on the back of the Harmonians without the Jewish advantage of
hiding themselves in the desert.31 The fact is that the ennemies
(as I frequently have told you) are enthousiasticaly industrious
in inventing all kinds of falshoods, and the great mass for whose
benifit it is, and must always remain, are drowned in whisky, with
the torpor and appathy of Chinese. The few who tryed, expecting
the paradice of Mr. O's lectures, were disappointed and, like all
ignorance, rail against what their self conceit takes for the Cause.
After Maclure had written this letter, the New-Harmony
Gazette of 9 August 1826 came to hand, providing food for
reflection. Maclure was apparently mistaken in assuming that
the constitution of the New Harmony Agricultural and
Pastoral Society, printed therein, represented an amalgamation
of two hitherto existing societies. But he was not mistaken
about the significance of two general meetings in the New
Harmony Hall which the Gazette reported. At the first of
these, on 30 July, Robert Owen had been interrogated on his
new doctrines of marriage, and then had been confronted by
a point-blank question that revealed how radical was the
agitation at New Harmony for complete community of
property. "Suppose," asked an unnamed member, perhaps
31 ..1
'But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be
presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let
him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness." Leviticus 16:10.
356 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Paul Brown, "one third of the population of this place should
pledge themselves to go the whole way with you, would you
be willing to go the whole — would you be willing to make
common stock of all your property — Are you willing to do
this?"32 Maclure saw the portent in this remark, but he had
even greater reason to be perturbed by a discourse on education
given by Owen on 6 August and published in the same issue
of the Gazette.™ It was not the substance of the speech that
was alarming, but the thinly veiled threat with which Owen
accompanied his comment on Maclure's schools: "If they fail
however, or fall short in their conceptions or practice of the
education which the new system requires, then they must be
furnished with such aids and assistance as may be needed to
complete this important part of the arrangement of the
measures in which we are engaged."
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, [Cincinnati, 21 August
1826, First Letter]34
. . . Mr. Owen, when you mention him as my partner, I have
not the smallest connection with anything he has done. Every
purchase or sale he has made has been either against my will or
unknowing to me, for which I cannot for a moment consider myself
responsible. When I objected he said he must have his own
way &c. When I told him I could not consider myself connected
with affairs I did not approve of and must back out at the
[risk] of the forfiture, but that I must consider his part of the
inlay to be only what he paid Rapp, the half of which I shall have
advanced him when I enable the School Community to pay him
60,000 Dollars. All the rest was expences and loss long before
I saw Mr. O. in America, and of course could not properly be
82 New-Harmony Gazette, I, 365 (9 Aug. 1826). A similar question was
put to Owen on 20 Aug. 1826. Ibid., I, 391 (30 Aug.). On 10 Sept. 1826
Paul Brown delivered an address in the New Harmony Hall advocating
immediate and complete community of property. See his Tzvelve Months,
pp. 41-54. Also compare Maclure's letter of 29 Aug. 1826, below.
33 Volume I, pp. 366-67 (9 Aug. 1826).
34 This letter is without date line or postmark, but is written on the
stationery Maclure used only during these months. Internal evidence, af-
forded by paragraphs not printed here, proves conclusively that it was written
after Maclure had completed his letter of [18] -21 Aug. above, and before
he began his other, fully dated letter of 21 Aug. below.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 357
equal to my cash, or to have anything to do with it. I must
therefore have nothing further to do with the business except
the Schools.
I wrote you from Mount Vernon to prevent his inserting my
name in any of the bonds he might take, as I did not conceive I had
any interest in any of his transactions. All I wrote to you concern-
ing him was intended for him to read, all without changing one
Iota of my good opinion of the System ; only from the first of his
opperations to the present I could not approve of his mode of
execution. I objected to every thing he has bought for store, mill,
tobacco &c, and told him I would as soon throw my money into
the Ohio as have anything to do with the people he seemed to
have confidence in.
By the last Gazette the pastoral & agricultural Communities
are disolved and joined into one without any certainty of going
on together. However, Mr. O. seems a little more cautious. He
had not given them, when the constitution was drawn up, any
tittle to the property he might have sold them. That curious
question and answer put into the Gazette, tho the answers are so
vague that little can be known by them, it is not so with the
questions. They speak volumes on the motives of the questioners.
"Would you, Mr. O., put all your property into the common stock
agreeable to your theory" ; That is, we are here in expectation of
making all the benifit from your property as the principle motive
that keeps us here.
I wish him all the success possible, tho I'm convinced that a
mine of gold would do nothing towards establishing the community
system under his management. I may be wrong but must act upon
my knowledge for my own preservation. The Schools I shall push
to the utmost extent, but they must be independent of his meta-
physics, which I call all schemes attempted to be introduced
into society some centuries before mankind are prepared for
them. . . . Don't allow yourself to doubt of the success of the
Schools. They shall be supported with all my property. And if
the folly of Owen's communities will not permit them to work
in their Children, we shall experiment on Children that are
independent of them. I have seen no part of Mr. Owen's conduct
(as to preaching, it goes for nothing with me) that could create
an idea that he is acquainted with the rudiments of a good
education, or that in his hurry to carry everything by storm he
has reflected on the immense use a rational education must be of
to the ultimate advancement of his system.
There are many like Phiquepal who will coppy from none nor
teach or act upon anything but what their vanity makes them
358 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
believe is of their invention. 'Tis in you and Neef I have confidence
that you will be able to raise helpers for your selves and be
independent of foreign support. But it must not be limmited to
a few. You must endeavour to qualify many to propagate the
System. I don't mean the System that may arrise out of Mr. O's
second lecture. Your community must be considered as independ-
ent of that and all other schemes but what is dictated by reason
and practicable in the present state of society.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Cincinnati, 21 August 1826
[Second Letter]
. . . You are wrong in supposing I have the smallest connection
in Mr. O's Communities except allowing [ ?] the money to the
School Community to pay him for the amount of property they
have bought of him. . . . You may take your time to advising of
all this, that he may not trust to receive any more from me than
clearing the Schools when a good and sufficient tittle is given.
All this is without changing any part of my good opinion of the
Community system. I only have for the last 6 mos tottaly changed
my opinion of Mr. Owen's capability to succeed in any undertaking
on the high visionary ideas that a concurrance of circumstances
had ingendered in his brain ; and that however willing I might
be to spend my money on my own education visions, I'm positively
determined to waste none of it on the visions of others, except as
far as the education system will forward his, which I firmly
believe will do more for it than all the money he could spend, even
if he had ten times the sum, on grown persons. . . .
You say you are convinced that nothing will go well but under
the immediate management of Mr. Owen and yet you see he puts
all out of his management by giving the store and tavern to
others, who have already, by laying a sure [ ?] tax on strangers,
anihilated the very spring of the community system &c. But these
things are none of my business. He may do as he pleases with
his own money, but cannot possibly expect to get any more of
mine than the payment of the School Community. . . .
Already those who have the tavern have begun to speculate
on the curiosity of the public by raising the Boarding 1 dollar
pr week.35 'Tis the first but not the last inconvenience [ ?] by
85 The "Rates of Fare" at the "House of Entertainment in New-
Harmony," advertised in the Gazette, I, 327 (5 July 1826), included the
following charges: "Each Meal's Victuals, $0.25 Cts" ; "Lodging, per
night, 0.12 1-2"; "Each person boarding and lodging per day, 0.62 1-2";
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 359
O. putting the store & tavern out of his own control. Visitors to
the School must not be subject to the gripe of individual cupidity.
Mr. Owen's Lecture on education in this day's Gazette of the
9 August, as far as your infant school, is well. When he comes
higher, fear the parrot system of New Lanark will interfere much
with Neef, and give further cause of complaint to ignorance.
Mr. O. is in too great a hurry and has some further object which
I cannot at present fathom. I'm rejoiced to find you all united
in friendly feelings. The explanation on marriage, tho rather
vague, was wanted, as the stories of the married women who have"
lately left you gives room to conjectures on the sexual relation
being indiscriminate and in common.
Mr. Say is busy naming a great addition they have got to
their museum here. . . .
While Thomas Say occupied himself with natural history,
Maclure continued his investigation of the various Owenite
projects that had been or were being set afoot in Cincinnati. A
month earlier, at Springfield, he had learned of a plan for a
new community at Nevilsville on the Ohio River, twenty or
thirty miles above Cincinnati, where a Mr. Nevil was offering
2500 acres of land for the experiment.36 Now, as Maclure
looked further into the matter in Cincinnati, he discovered
again the trail of that "Mr. Brown" who had stirred up
trouble at the Yellow Springs Community, and whose extreme
doctrines regarding community of property were identical with
those of Owen's unnamed questioner at New Harmony.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Cincinnati, 29 August 1826
... I wrote to Robert Dale [Owen] and explained all I knew
of your affairs, tho very little of the particulars reaches us but
by the Gazette, which is so vague as to leave much to conjecture. It
appears the Mr. O. made three communities, mecanics, agricul-
tural & pasturals. The two last were presently disolved and
partly joined the prairies &c, since which they have been joined
"Each person boarding and lodging, per week, 3.00." See also Brown,
Twelve Months, p. 120.
38 Mentioned to Madame Fretageot in a letter from Springfield on
24 July 1826, not printed herein. The Nevilsville project was still under
consideration in 1827. See "Pelham Letters," p. 415; and Brown, Twelve
Months, p. 89.
360 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
into one society37 and, as the mecanics, . . . [show] the
same . . . discontent.
Agreeable to what is said here, Mr. Brown tryed his skill as
an experienced community man with Mr. Nevil here to form
a community at Nevilsville, and brought another Lawyer with
him, & Mr. Roe, principle agent in the dissolution of the Yellow
Springs and who keeps possession of part of the premises now.
Mr. Nevil says they insisted on his giving up all his property
to be in common &c, and such other conditions which in the
present imperfect state of the community system he thought it
would be madness to comply with. They seem all to act upon
the most exagerated principles of Owenizm, and all seem totally
to forget the state of society they are in, as if a few lectures from
a heated imagination could possibly reform the work of many
centuries, and the greatest change that ever was attempted on
earth to be effected like magic or a change in the scenes of a
Theatre, when all the power of the Russian Autocrats have not
been able to cut one hair of the Beards of their slaves.
The reason I trouble you so much about Owen's affairs is the
fear I have of his throwing away all his money upon materials
that never was, nor I believe never will be, fit for making a fair
experiment of the System ; that when his money is gone his
influence is at an end, and all he has done will crumble into
dust. It goes hard with me to think so, and nothing but the
reiterated folly and blunders he has and is still making could
possibly force me into that train of thinking ; after he had been
completely disappointed in all his Legislative Trust resolves [ ?]
& other schemes, which might have convinced any but the most
obstinate egotist the total impossibility of doing anything with
such a mass of heterogeneous matter.
His interest, the interest of the System, and characters of
both, imperiously demanded to follow a contrary system : to divide
37 Maclure was mistaken in assuming that the "agricultural & pasturals"
had once constituted two separate societies ; the other sources agree in
describing them as a single organization. See Brown, Twelve Months,
pp. 24-25, 35-36; see also footnote 21 above. The reference here to "the
prairies" is puzzling. Elsewhere the term seems clearly to refer to the
Agricultural and Pastoral Society. See Maclure, 2 Aug., and 25 Sept. 1826,
and Mme. Fretageot, 11 Aug. 1826; the term occurs in no other contemporary
source. In the present passage, however, a contradistinction is obviously in-
tended. Possibly the reference is to Community No. 3, or Feiba-Peveli,
settled by farmers from the English Prairie, Morris Birbeck's colony in
Illinois. See Karl Bernhard. Travels, in Lindley (ed.), Indiana as Seen
by Early Travelers, p. 429.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 301
the town mecanics into occupations ; abandon the town agricultural
or pastorals as unable from their previous habits & the circum-
stances that has, and does yet, surround them, of doing anything
for themselves or others ; keep the store and tavern in his own
hands as a regulator for all the communities ; and settling as
many small communities on his land as he could find societies of
20 or 30 families intimately acquainted with each other and having
confidence, the only possible foundation of that friendly feeling,
the sine qua non of the Cooperative society. In giving up the
control of the store and Tavern he has thrown the apple of discord
among them and paralized the industry of those communities he
has hurt by introducing the rage for speculation, the never failing
attendants on trade, of which tavern keeping in this country is
the most lucrative. But you shall hear no more on that sub-
ject from me. . . .
I am modestly and moderately recommending the schools, but
do not venture on exagerations that I cannot believe. Am
therefore far behind Owen in his flights of immagination, as
I have always found the best way of convincing mankind is to
let them think their convicion rests on their own reason & reflec-
tion, not upon the ipse dixit of any one. . . .
You are all, except Neef, rather young in this country and
may not be in the habits of foreseeing the consequences of the
different manias that has seized upon this speculative people. The
mercantile mania, created and encouraged by the Neutral trade, is
nearly [ ?] on its last legs. The Bank mania has been crippled
but has yet strength enough to engender a great deal of mischief.
The Canal mania is now at its Zenith. The land speculation mania
is almost defunkt after ruining most of its dupes. The canal
mania is spreading like a pestilence, radiating from New York
as a center, tho, like an old decayed tree rotten at the heart, shows
vigor in the shoots from the bark. In this state the canal, 60 miles
to a Village called Dayton, is 40 feet wide, gravel bottom, to be
filled at one end by the Miami. I query if water enough can be got
from the River in summer to replace the evaporation & filtration.
I had got so far when the post brought me yours of the
18th, Neef's of the 19, and Robert's of the same date, along with
the most astonishing of them all, O's sermon on education, which
as far as I understand it is the greatest mixture of contradictions
I ever read. But he's incorrigible, and we must get out of the
alliance as well as we can, and on no account make it appear that
we differ from him in any material matter. Don't be too quick in
following [his] Visionary schemes, but proceed slowly and
362 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
cautiously, for he is certainly, I had almost said, mad, talks as if
he had the world in his pocket, that the few insignificant beings
that were listening to him composed the whole inhabitants of the
Earth — but I must stop.
By my last you may see that, knowing the superficial knowledge
of Mr. O. on education, I rather was prepared for this blow
up. I shall answer Neef's letter and advise him to be quiet, not
permit the folly of an enthusiast to spoil a good and benevolent
principle, that I will support him in the management of . . . Ex-
perimental School farms and get him orphans if others are not
to be found to carry it on, that in the meantime he is to help
Mr. Lesueur to take care of my books, instruments and minerals,
none of which can be necessary to the parrot vissionary education
laid down by Mr. O.
Think you are too full of Owen. Don't allow your enthousiazm
to embark your all in his fate. Cannot for a moment believe your
charracter of the Neefs just, but shall not contradict you in your
scheme of having a school on the Owen principle, tho I believe
a visionary theory, in which no one of common sense has yet been
run [?], for of all the children of New Lanark none got above
the merit of twisting a thread of cotton. Keep cool and
dispashionate. Don't act upon the ideas of the moment. Take
a day, a week, and often a month to look at every side of the object.
I shall write to Robert [Dale Owen] this post. Tell him to
assist Mr. Neef and Mr. Lesueur to secure all my books and
minerals untill I return, and if necessary to give some of the money
I left with him to Mr. Neef. His system I have watched the
practice of for upwards of 25 years and cannot be such a fool
as to abandon it for the wild speculations of a Visionary who
does not see the rocks and shoals on which he and his flimsy
bark will be dashed in pieces. . . .
P. S. I was the sole cause of Neef's comming to Harmony and
am bound by all tyes to protect him and support him in the
prosecution of his plans. I wish you and all Mr. O's schemes
success, but I can't, without giving up all my sences and fall into
a state of dreaming absurdity, think for a moment they can
succeed. . . . The ennemy is on the watch and has too many
scourges for us. Mr. O. has put all the rods in pickle.
The news that interrupted Maclure's letter concerned
Owen's second lecture on education, delivered on 13 August
1826 and printed in the Gazette three days later.38 The text as
88 Volume I, pp. 372-75 (16 Aug. 1826).
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 363
printed contained little to justify Maclure's remark about a
"blow up." The discourse, on the whole, was less visionary
than most of Owen's utterances, and its broad principles
harmonized in the main with Maclure's own educational
philosophy. Owen, it is true, laid great stress upon the use
of maps and globes and upon the learning of geographical
names, and Maclure felt, with some reason, that this was a
perversion of the new educational doctrines. From such
training, he believed, pupils would receive not the useful and
practical education that Owen promised, but a parrotlike facility
at memorization. Moreover, Owen's fondness for the Lan-
castrian system of education, by which the older children
would in part instruct the younger, was at variance with
Maclure's idea of assembling the ablest teachers and men of
science for the faculty of his schools.
Nevertheless, these divergencies in theory hardly account
for the vehemence of Maclure's reaction to the news from New
Harmony. One can only surmise that the letters of Neef,
Madame Fretageot, and Robert Dale Owen revealed more than
was in the printed reports — perhaps the detailed practical plans
which Owen did not publicly announce until a third meeting
on 20 August. These plans, eventually published in the Gazette
on the 23d and the 30th,89 were truly subversive of all the
educational arrangements that had been worked out thus far
at New Harmony. Owen proposed, and the community
unanimously agreed, "that the entire population of New-
Harmony should meet three times a week in the Hall for the
purpose of being educated together : the children in the interim
to be educated in classes; but to attend with the adults in the
Hall." At one stroke the Education Society was to be deprived
of all its functions, for the "interim" classes for children were
to be under Owen's auspices.
What upset Maclure more than anything else was that
Madame Fretageot fell in with these plans, against the judg-
ment of the others in the Education Society, and undertook to
n
Volume I, pp. 382-83, 390-91. The quotation is from p. 383.
364 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
conduct some of the classes that Owen's scheme called for. Paul
Brown, writing with a strong bias against her, described the
episode in the following terms: "This house, No. 5, was
occupied by a Madame Fratageot, keeping a school for the
inhabitants of [Community] No. 1, or south part of the
town, in opposition to that of the education society, of which
she had been expelled from membership for refusing to teach
such a number of children and of such ages as the society
appointed for her employ; she preferring to take the whole of
the teaching under her superintendence. ... It became a
boarding school for young men of the other part of the town ;
besides being the school of a multitude of young children of
both sexes, who resorted there every day. Such things were
hostile and injurious to the feelings of the society, from the
beginning ; but they endured them. Some have found reasons
for believing that this same female teacher was at the bottom
of most of the overturning manoeuvres of this place, as being
willing by ingratiating herself with Owen and M'Clure, to
promote her own interest exclusive of others."40
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Cincinnati, 30 August 1826
Dear Madam
Tho I had anticipated some of the effects that Mr. O's inter-
ference with education must produce, from my previous conviction
of his tottall ignorance and inexperience of anything but a kind
of qua[c]kery resting on faith and beliefs as practiced at New
Lanark, the news of the explosion only arriving about 2 hours
before the last mail closed did not permit me to view it in all
its bearings.
First, your situation as only one of the voices in the School
community, which was only equal to any one of the many of
Neef's helpers & family, that I suppose may be equal to nearly
a majority (as Mr. Robert [Dale Owen] disclaims all interference),
common prudence would certainly have dictated to you not to be
in a hurry to throw all into confusion, and when the sick [ ?] pupils
of Mr. O's surrounding circumstances took all their Children
bag and baggage, cloths &c. away, you would have had the good
sence to see how many remained and alow them to follow the
40 Twelve Months, p. 82.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 365
arrangement agreeable to age settled at first. Neef might have
retained 40 and you perhaps 30 as a number round which more
might have been gathered either by taking orphans or trusting to
the good sence of those without the influence of O's sermons, for
at last I believe it is too soon to attemp any beneficial reform in
education with Children under the control of their ignorant
Parents, and I must be forced to make all my tryals with them
that have none to warp their natural faculties. But I confess I
would much rather make those tryals 100 miles from all the
above [ ?] visionary, frustrated schemes of Mr. O. at Harmony
than so near it as to be interrupted by the vicinity of so much
discordant materials, but having already advanced 35,000 dollars
to the school community, for which they have got a property, tho
valued at double it would have sold for in cash, yet it is a property
that under proper management may save considerable outlay of
money, and may be the focus of most of the little communities that
Mr. O. may be forced [ ?] to make when he is undeceaved in his
town communities, which will be as soon as he has no more money
to waste on them ; for as to the Schools formed on Mr. Owen's
parrot principles, they cannot possibly deceive even the ignorance
he has surrounded himself with.
You praise much the suppleness of Mr. O. but forget that it
is all in words, that has done much in France and other polite
airy countries, but you seem tottally to neglect his actions which
are like the laws of the Medes & Persians unalterable. Tho he
has failed in every attempt, yet he returns on the selfsame ground
to be certainly defeat again, as he will be in this metaphysical,
contradictory system of education, which looks just as if he had
been affraid of the independence and success of the School
Community and resolved to involve it in the general wreck.
You seem to think that no community will succeed but under
his management. Quite the contrary is the fact. All have failed
by following the blaze of his wild theories without possessing the
wealth which alone has supported him. They, like him, immagined
that all would be done by money, and neglected industry, the only
possible foundation on which cooperative Societies can stand.
Mr. O. in sermons and words is the most supple of the human
species, and the most obstinate in action. He is likewise the most
vain. Every blunder he commits is a master stroke of policy that
could not possibly have happened better. But let us leave him to
himself, and try to escape the wreck he has surrounded himself with.
You have unfortunately mistaken in your immitation of
him. He rants in big vague and and undefined words, out of
366 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
which he has always many holes to creep thro', but you have
committed yourself in an unconsiderate action without sufficiently
examining the consequences both to your favorite system and
to your self. What can you do with the boys of from 6 to 12
years, or even with the girls ? What an incongruous mixture !
Admitted that all the carelessness of Neef 's School and his helpers
were true, which I much doubt, it was not the way to correct
them. Your way was to showe them an example of order,
cleanlyness and propriety in your 30 infants, that they might and
no doubt would have immitated.
I cannot blame you for having been deceived in the charracter
of Mr. O., for all the deceptions of my life put together did not
amount to the stupidity of the last. And it was owing to the
neglect of a general rule in reguard to judging of him by his
motives, wheras thro life I have always supposed men's motives
equaly selfish and judged them wholely on their actions. But
it is not too late. What I have at stake I can lose without being
ruined, and I'm decided not to augment the risk by any farther
advance but for the conducting of the Schools on rational principles
that has no resemblance to Mr. O. general, universal, imperial and
sweeping principle, which might suit a Bonapart in the Zenith
of his power.
I must repeat that the cooperative System has rose in my
esteem and strong conviction of its utility in exact proportion as
the positive conviction of Mr. O's mode being the ruin of it for
some time in this country, and that he has been working hard to
defeat his own views, like a traveller that gets on wrong road, the
further he goes the further he is from being right.
Take time. Do nothing in a hurry nor anything you cannot
easily undo. Always recollect that 50 dollars a year is as much
as either you or I can eat. Restrain all ambition as the straight [ ?1
road to misery. Tho O. and I can never act together, as I have
long told him, we need not oppose one another. Our roads are
seperate and distinct. Tho he has (unconsciously I believe) ruined
some of my plans for the present, they, I flatter myself, are so
deep rooted in the interest of the great mass that they must
eventualy succeed. And notwithstanding of your opinion of Neef
and family I think by their help I shall be able to prove what I have
been long speculating upon, that children under proper tuition will
educate, feed and cloth themselves by their own industry. . . .
There are two things that never give me the least uneasiness,
what I can help and what I cannot help. Now make your mind
easy on its being intirely out of your power to make Mr. Owen & I
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 367
to act together, or to invest any more of my property in his
schemes. What I have I believe I can yet do some good with, as
certainly as I think he will spend all his without benifiting any
but the most useless of mankind. Don't be disappointed at the
late events. They cannot hurt or endanger your future prospects.
You could have a school any where, independent of communities,
that Mr. O. has for the present given the death blow in this
country by his rash precipitation. He has passed the Rubicon41 but
carried none with him. If it was possible to make him silent for
one year it would do more good to his system than all its friends
have done since it was thought of.
Make yourself as happy as you can. Avoid giving pain to
any one, and above all curb ambition. Achille [Fretageotl 1S
well, and Mr. Say is sorry for the differences between you, but
thinks, like a Philosopher, all may still be well. He is out
hunting Insects.
I remain yours sincerely
Wm Maclure . . .
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Louisville, Kentucky,
19 September 1826
Dear Madam
Your letters of the 25 August & 8 Septemr received. You
accuse me of believing in my ears and being deceived by the stories
told me by those you suppose your ennimies. I only believe what
you said you intended to do, and now what you attempted to do
against the opinion of the whole of the School Community, who are
as independent of me in reguard to their management of their own
affairs as they are of Mr. Owen or any other individual. It was
fearing the interference of Mr. O. that induced me to render them
independent of such tergiversation by advancing them the funds.
What a necromancer must that Mr. O. be that has so bewitched
you ! When I merely mentioned the propriety of indulging his
folly in spheres, globes, maps &c. for the purpose of taking the
Children off the street and out of mischief, you were in such
a rage as to wish yourself back at Philadelphia, and were only
prevented by your effects being on the way from New Orleans,
which you might miss. Now you seem to prefer the parrot method
of sticking incomprehensibles into the memories of Children as
you would do pins into a pincushion, to the Pestalozzian System
41 Owen used the phrase in his second educational discourse, on 13 Aug.
New-Harmony Gazette, T, 374 (16 Aug. 1826).
368 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
as taught by Mr. Neef, who I have reason to believe by experience
has taught it in greater perfection than ever it was taught
before. Neef, like all men, has his failings, but as a teacher he
has made more clever men for the number he was allowed to
educate than I believe ever came from any School on earth. This
is not visionary theories of stars, spheres &c, but positive and
usefull practice. By following all his pupils into man's estate, and
judging of their correct conduct, only two out of seventy have
gone astray, and one of them only so upon the faith of a step
mother, which I have found not exact. What a weather cock
you must have thought me to sacrifice 30 years' experience to
the whims & caprices of a visionary who has failed in every
attemp he has made here to improve adults and is now trying his
hand on Children with most probably the same success.
Who was it that took your Children from you but O. ? Who
disgusted the people with the Pestalozzi system to render Neef
unpopular but O. ? Who laid schemes and intrigued to get the
control of the School Community but O.? Who imployed you to
revenge himself on Neef because he was the only man in Harmony
that told him the truth of his Parrot system, but O. ? Who is now
trying to join the School community to his debilitated communities,
to sweep all into the vortex of ruin and destruction, but O. ?
What a humiliating situation your ambition and love of power
has brought you to, to be indebted to parental coertion for the only
vote, apparently, in your favor, R[ober]t D. Owen, who in his last
letter to me professed not to interfere and tho he promised you
two posts has not written since. He is perhaps ashamed and
unwilling to contradict the gratitude he feels for your nursing
in his sicness.
Suppose for a moment that all about rags, filth, gormandizing
&c. were true, who gave you authority in the state of perfect
equality of rights and duties to interfere with the duties of
others ? Who had the power to make you lord god and governor of
the community? When you signed the deed you were all equal.
The Chief has changed his mind by swallowing every second
word he has pronounced in this country, and finds that nothing but
monarchy or despotizm can make men happy. Be it so. But you
was at least imprudent to practice on his theory, which he will
abandon the moment he finds it won't go down in this country, and
leave you unprotected to your fate.
All this I take from the contents of your owen [own] letters,
without mentioning . . . the hard words and contemptuous
language your passion prompted you to hold to your companions
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 369
and equals of the School Community, or the many other things
that come to us from all quarters, part of which may be exageration
in retaliation for your violence. But as they have all written to
me I must answer them, and I cannot help expressing my satisfac-
tion at the manly open manner the whole members of the
community (except one who by the tyes of relation was not to
be supposed free) resisted all usurpation under whatever authority
it may have been sanctioned.
You deceive yourself much in supposing that I'm guided in
this by what I hear. Had your own letters not sanctioned all, from
your former conduct I could not [have] been perswaded that
you would have thus acted. For sometime I have endeavoured
to value everything by its utility, and I acknowledge that you have
been heretofore exceedingly usefull in improving education, and
it's with much regret I'm forced to think that following the course
you propose you will cease to be of that utility that you have been
or that you are capable of. And of course it would be sacrifizing
every thing to loose the cooperation of those whose long practice
and imminent qualifications render them so necessary to the
promotion of such schools.
But let us hope that you will think better of it and not throw
away the occasion of being usefull to your fellow beings. Had
you read my numberless letters you must have seen that none of
the actions of Mr. O. met my approbation, and that least of all
this last explosion, which, tho I dreaded it by former hints, I scarce
expected he would have been in so desperate a hurry. But
desperate precipitation is perhaps the cause of most of his blunders,
concerning which it is unnecessary now to mention.
I'm sorry for the sicness of F. Wright. If she had been with
you she would most probably have hindered you from exposing
yourself and the System to much obliquy and damage.
And I remain more sincerely than ever your friend
Wm Maclure . . .
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Louisville,
25 September 1826
Dear Madam
Your last letter of the 15 Septem[be]r gave me much pleasure,
when combined with R[ober]t D. Owen of the same date, inform-
ing that all cause of dispute had happily subsided, and that your
School as well as Phiquepal's was to commence on Monday next
after the date, which, if I recollect well, was on the 18th. The
whole appears to us at this distance from the field of action to
370 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
have arrose from a misconception of one another's opinions and
motives, kept up and by the great exageration and malignant
falshoods of some go between who supposed he had an interest in
the probable result of your quarrel. . . . His complete disappoint-
ment I hope will prevent repetiation [repetition], against which
you must be constantly on your guard. . . .
I'm however exceedingly glad to learn that the inhabitants of
No. 242 are improving in their cleanliness, which proves that
there can scarce happen any evil without some good. And if it
could possibly be the means of preventing all of us from acting
when under the influence of anger and passion it would forward
more the cooperative system than all the sermons that have been
preached this last 2 years.
We perhaps have reason to conclude by the late opperations,
which involved the best heads in Harmony, that even the best
informed are very far removed from that friendly feeling, that
mild complacent temper, which the theories of the Chief infuses
so strongly in his lectures, but which I'm affraid his acts does
not better support than those rulers of the old system who are
constantly telling us to do as they direct, not as they do. Vain
people may flatter themselves that they have got the better of all
selfishness, but it's only a proof of there inordinate vanity, which
many great men carry so far as to hate and detest all who differ
from them even when they tell them the truth, and take council
only from those weak insignificant beings who flatter all their
foibles, whims and caprices. Let us hope there are but few such
spoiled biped at Harmony. . . .
In all these changes, charracters are flashed into view and
disappear on your field of action like the change of a scene on the
theatre, and make some believe it is all a farce. We are told by
most people here that you had left Harmony in disgust and
that all was a c[h]aos waiting for the creator to produce order
out of confusion.
A young married lady that came here from Harmony boarded
in this house and insisted on washing, ironing &c. all her own and
her husband's cloths as she was accustomed to do at Harmony, a
better example of some little good in practice growing out of this
deluge of theory than anything I have heard either before or
since I left you.
Patience, patience, is a substitute for all the virtues. Never
be in a hurry is the motto of the Shaking Quakers. Don't repine
43 House No. 2, where Neef conducted his school.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 371
because you have not 80 or 90 children. The fewer you have the
more perfect [ ?] will they be educated, and no one will inquire
on examining their progress how many pupils you had. Your
School is not known to one in a hundred thousand of the inhabitants
of the Union, nor has any of you taken the smallest pains to let it
be known. I have been deterred from speaking positively of the
advantages by the fear of revolutions on your volcanic soil. Wait
the next turn of the wand of the Chief with his sphere in hand. The
last movement dashed to ruin all your community expectations, the
next turn may dash them all back again. . . .
Patience, things will find their level. The materials in this
country are not the same as the cotton spinners at New Lanark, nor
does the advice of a patron go so far. The most ignorant of them
both think and act in more cases for themselves and may be deluded
by qua[c]kery for a little, but when they bring things to the scale
of common sence and utility they can and will judge.
Give yourself no uneasiness about the fate of the Schools. As
soon as you have all organized you will have pupils enough. Be
united and don't allow the most dextrous intriguer to enter his
wage [wedge] between you. I fortold the fate of the prairies
and the cut off mile societies.43 Fear I will be too true a prophit
respecting the ultimate result of some others. But those things
we cannot help and must leave them and practice the system that
experience has proven to be the best that yet has appeared. . . .
Mr. Tybout [Cornelius Tiebout] with his family joins the
School Society and will be ready to forward his work on fifth [ ?] ,
for which purpose he had better find a place for the printing press
and gQt all ready the types ; maybe get from Cincinati what is
wanted. Young 44 or some other will teach the boys
to sett Types, for I'm determined to push science as far as I can
in the School community, as the theories of which they have the
greatest need as a foundation for these metaphysical, astronomical,
spherical system of Ofwen], of which as the education of children
I have a more despicable opinion than of the most absurd part
of the old system. It is too ridiculous almost to reason upon, both
as being without the reach of all there sences and depending on
faith in the ipse dixit of the master, and its being of little or no
utility after you have twisted and tortured the memories of the
43 By the "cut off mile society" Maclure perhaps means the Mechanic
Society, for the gristmill (which was presumably part of its operating
equipment) was located at the cutoff on the Wabash River. See Lindley
(ed.), Ituliana as Seen by Early Travelers, pp. 430, 543.
44 The name is left blank in the manuscript.
372 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
youth with a farago of uncouth names, for which it is ten to one if
ever they have occasion during life time. But we must let him go on.
All that we have to do is to educate those entrusted to the Schools
in such a manner as to be an example to all that examine them,
which I have no doubt the present teachers are fully capable of.
I remain yours sincerely
Wm Maclure
P.S. Am sorry to learn Miss Wright's indisposition. Hope
she has recovered and that we shall have the pleasure of seeing
her on our arrival at Harmony, which may be in 6 or 8 days after
you get this.
IV. OWEN AND MACLURE REACH AN
OPEN BREAK
October 1826 — May 1827
On 7 October 1826 William Maclure returned to New
Harmony, accompanied by Thomas Say. During his
four months' absence he had been fully informed of happenings
at the community, and observation promptly showed the
accuracy of his forebodings.
The experiment of dividing the New Harmony Community
by occupations had failed, and Owen was busy with the fourth
major reorganization in nine months. On 17 September he
had proposed a fresh start, and by 2 October (five days before
Maclure's return) the new society, still called New Harmony
Community No. 1, had come into existence, superseding the
Agricultural and Pastoral Society, the Mechanic Society, and
whatever remnants of earlier organizations still existed in the
town. The new frame of government — a "covenant and
agreement" rather than a constitution — vested "sole manage-
ment and control" in a board of five trustees, including Owen
himself and four appointees of his. Admission of members
to the new "trust," as it came to be called, was not automatic,
and Owen and his fellow trustees began that weeding out of
undesired inhabitants which Maclure had long recommended.
Maclure believed this to be a step in the right direction, but
radicals like Paul Brown could apply to it no terms milder than
"despotism" and "star-chamber." Even Maclure was forced
to admit the justice of Brown's charge that "partiality found
its way into this distribution," whereby "some favorites and
the families of trustees were indulged with conveniences,
[whether of clothing or provision,] which other laboring,
drudging poor were denied.'
"i
1 Brown, Twelve Months, p. 76 (brackets his) ; see also pp. 61-67 for
an account of this fourth reorganization and the text of its covenant and
agreement. Maclure's references to partiality on the part of the "trust" are
in his letters of 28 Nov., and 22 Dec. 1826, below.
(373)
374 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The two communities of Macluria and Feiba-Peveli held
aloof from this fourth reorganization, but their situation
offered little hope that the new social system would be realized
on their domains. A fortnight or so after Maclure's return
the members of Macluria deposed three of their councilmen
and advertised that they would not be accountable for contracts
made by the displaced authorities.2 The factional strife of
which this was the outward manifestation brought this com-
munity to an end within a month. Only at Feiba-Peveli was
there a semblance of harmony, but the cohesive force that kept
them together until March 18283 was apparently not so much
Owen's doctrine as the national self-consciousness of the
English farmers who had established the colony.
The news of the Education Society that had reached
Maclure during his absence had been disconcerting, but the last
group of letters had reassured him, and he returned to New
Harmony determined to push its work vigorously. One
obstacle, at least, was gone, for Owen's grandiose plan of
educating all the inhabitants of the community together, in
triweekly meetings at the Hall, had already been abandoned.4
On the other hand, Maclure's plans were handicapped by the
continuing rivalry between his teachers. Three separate schools
were being conducted — one by Phiquepal in the Steeple House
3 Public notice, dated 24 Oct. 1826, in New-Harmony Gazette, II, 31
(25 Oct. 1826).
3 The dissolution of Feiba-Peveli can probably be read into the legal
notice published after a meeting of the community on 8 March 1828 at which
an agent was appointed "for the transaction of all business relative to the
Community." New-Harmony Gazette, III, 167 (19 March 1828). A month
later fire destroyed a building "hitherto occupied by Community No. 3."
Ibid., 199 (16 April 1828).
* Owen's plan was adopted by vote on 20 Aug. 1826. According to
Paul Brown it "went on perhaps six weeks" ; according to Robert Dale
Owen, "a month or two." Twelve Months, p. 41 ; R. D. Owen, Threading
My Way (New York, 1874), p. 288. The ambiguous phraseology of the
New-Harmony Gazette tends to confirm this. The new programs "have
commenced," reported the Gazette on 11 Oct.; "an experiment has been
made," said Owen on 11 Nov.; "arrangements have been formed, by which,
soon, all the children of the Community will be educated together," announced
the Gazette on 29 Nov. Volume II, pp. 15, 63, 70.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 375
and the Hall (the old Rappite churches), another by Neef in
Community House No. 2, and the third by Madame Fretageot
in Father Rapp's old mansion, now called Community House
No. 5. Moreover, the latter was not confining her efforts to
infants, as Maclure had recommended, but was conducting a
boarding school for the young men of Owen's community ?nd
a day school for children of both sexes and all ages.5
Nevertheless, Madame Fretageot was less under the in-
fluence of Owen's educational theories than Maclure had at
first supposed, and he was accordingly willing to accept the
situation as he found it. Confident of the future of the
educational enterprise, but anxious to give it greater legal
security than the agreements with Owen afforded, Maclure
spent part of his time at New Harmony in drawing up a
petition to the state legislature for an act to incorporate the
"New-Harmony Education Society." It was introduced in the
subsequent session, but was overwhelmingly rejected by a senate
distrustful of the heterodox views that prevailed at New
Harmony6 — probably not to Maclure's surprise, for he did
not bother to comment on the disappointing outcome in
his correspondence.
Cold weather was approaching, and Maclure's health re-
quired a warmer climate. After only seven weeks in New
Harmony he departed on 25 November 1826 for New Orleans.
While he waited for a steamboat he communicated to Madame
Fretageot the reports that were circulating in Mount Vernon,
the county seat.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Mount Vernon, Indiana,
28 November 1826
I have written my Brother [Alexander Maclure] a long letter
which he will show you, and I must trust you for the mediator
between Mr. Owen and the School community, for from all 1 have
learned here, where a great many of community No. 1 came last
5 See Brown, Twelve Months, p. 82 ; "Pelham Letters," p. 414 ; and
Madame Fretageot's letter of 2 March 1827, below.
8 See New-Harmony Gazette, II, 62, 157, 158-59 (22 Nov. 1826, 14 Feb.
1827) ; Indiana Senate Journal, 1826-27, pp. 181-82.
376 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Sunday, things are far from being in the state Mr. O. flatters
himself they are. He has established certain aristocratic families
who have every thing at the store they want, some of them as far
as 6 or 8 fine ladies' dresses during the short time he has formed
his last trust, which is the object of jealousy, distrust and discontent
to all the rest. Even in our small society certain ladies by not
doing any of the drudgery caused the discontent and disatisfaction
which is doing 100 times more harm than all their labor at lessons
can possibly do good ; for it is clear that if one is exemp from the
hard labor when they have time, all has the same right ; and it's too
soon for the women of the society to understand the utility of
education. Untill they do, all must participate of what is called
manual labor, that is Cooking, Washing &c. . . .
Could you contrive to give some lessons to the mothers as well
as the Children? From what I have learned here Mr. O. would
willingly have all his Children taught more exactly in the New
Lanark system (that is by faith rather than observation) than
he finds you willing to do, for which purpose a boarding house
was to be got up under Mrs. Ashworth, to follow implicitly his
dictates. But, as the story goes, Mrs. Ashworth goes up the
Wabash with her brother in law, and it's probable he cannot find
another woman (easy as he is to please with all that pretend to
favor his schemes) that he thinks anyway capable to fill the place.
Everything I learn here would convince me that the store has
been feeding and clothing the whole Society. I hope it's not
true, but something that droped from him about the want of money
rather confirms that he has already spent the greatest part of the
15,000 dollars, partly by selling his goods 50% cheaper than they
can be got elsewhere. From here they send to Harmony for all
their groceries and goods when they have cash, because it is the
cheapest shop in the whole country.7 And I'm told, tho I have
not been in it, that the store is most empty. These are serious
truths. He must not depend on me for more than the ballance
the School Corporation will owe him next spring, as, at the rate
he has expended, my whole fortune would be engulfed without
bringing him one iota nearer his purpose. On the contrary, the
more he has to spend, the further he will be from success. He
may retaliate on my schools . . . but I don't mean to spend any
more than my revenue in future and shall not touch the capital.
7 Paul Brown made an opposite charge, that the store was "retailing
goods at extortionate prices much higher than those of any other trading
houses in the neighboring country." Twelve Months, p. 120. Maclure's
statement seems the more credible.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 377
He has got nearly 1/2 of all I possess but shall not get any
more. He seems to me under an infatuation like the dogmas
of religion, incomprehensible.
I got some faint hopes from one that knows well his whole
establishment, who thinks there is not above 1/4 good for nothing
and rather injurious to the community system; I should have
supposed 3/4. The same man thinks his perseverance will get
along. If he can pay the expence he may in the end get men fit
for a community system, which with proper management he might
have had at first without expending anything. In short, his
situation as it appears upon mature reflection is a melancoly
one, and is one of the more . . . [foolish?] men on the Globe
by being so positive of his superiority as to require nothing to
found unlimmitted confidence upon than a perfect coincidence with
all his opinions, which few but rog[ue]s and hypocrites would
even pretend to. I most heartily wish I may be wrong in all
my conjectures, but I fear the worst. Robert [Dale Owen] &
William [Owen] ought to acquire some positive knowledge of the
situation of things before their father leaves them, as he intends
in the spring ; otherwise things will go worse than my most gloomy
supositions can make them.
My experience at Harmony has given me such a horror for the
reformation of grown persons that I shudder when I reflect having
so many of my friends so near such a desperate undertaking. I
wish you were 1000 miles from them, amongst the Indians or
any where out of their reach. They will torment you for the
pleasure of doing evil. But I shall hope your force of mind
will rise supperior to all your tryals.
I have given both Say and my Brother warning to keep a watch
on the conduct of Phiquepal, who in destroying the only smith's
shop8 will paralize the utility of the Cuttler that is comming. For
the purpose of cutting off his boys from all intercourse with the
rest of the Community, and by that proving his detestation of the
ground work of Mr. Owen's system, sociability, by making monks
of them. He is a dangerous mad man, who can influence so
many men ... to support and indulge him in all his whims and
caprices with the sweat of their brows. But Vanity is at the
bottom. He is, I think, the vanest man I ever knew. And when
that Vanity is disappointed he will go to bedlam. . . .
8 According to Paul Brown, Phiquepal had made a kitchen and eating
hall of the "brick building," which, after his later eviction, "was again to be
converted to a blacksmith's shop." Twelve Months, p. 117 (italics mine).
378 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
From Mount Vernon Maclure took the steamboat down the
Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, where he arrived on
20 December 1826. He stopped en route to inspect Frances
Wright's community at Nashoba, Tennessee, but the letter
he wrote describing it has unfortunately disappeared.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, New Orleans,
22 December 1826
I wrote you a long letter from Mount Vernon. ... I likewise
wrote to you from Memphis giving you an account of the state of
Miss Wright's plantation and the excellent order, regularity and
oeconomy she had established with her black population,9 which
would be a melancolly contrast with the contrary I left at Harmony.
And I intended adding something I had learned concerning the
errors of Mr. O's administration at Harmony, but the Tecumseh
steam boat passing prevented me.
1st. Impossible to fix the uncertainty of his population untill
they produce as much as they consume, for untill that time they
must all expect that Mr. O's finances must at last fail and they
be thrown out into old society, for which they must be perpetualy
preparing by collecting, perhaps pilaging, all they can, without
the smallest confidence in the System or its principles, Mr. O's
surrounding circumstances being beyond their comprehension.
2dly. The above indispensible result is much retarded, if not
totally frustrated, by the ignorance of those he has chose to direct
the whole, ordering the occupations to change their trade, sending
the Shoe makers, Tanners &c. to dig potatoes &c, not only occupy-
ing them in a less profitable work, but disabling them for many
days from working ef fectualy in their trade by spoiling their hands
and rendering them unfit for some time for their usual occupations.
The great fault found by the members is against the partiality
shown to the trust and their families, so contrary to all the theories
of the sociable system. . . .
Discouraged though Maclure might be at the state of affairs
in New Harmony, he had lost none of his hope that education
"Frances Wright's community at Nashoba, Tennessee, her connection
with New Harmony and with the Free Enquirer (the successor of the
New-Harmony Gazette), and her marriage to Phiquepal in 1831 are fully
discussed in William R. Waterman, Frances Wright (Columbia University,
Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, CXV, no. 1, New York,
1924), and A. J. G. Perkins and Theresa Wolf son, Frances Wright, Free
Enquirer (New York, 1939).
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 379
might ultimately produce a new and happier social order. As
one means to that end he meditated on the possibility of making
industry itself attractive. The idea had been hinted at in the
letter of 16 March 1826 to Benjamin Silliman reprinted above,
but it was developed at greater length in his correspondence
from New Orleans. Quite possibly Maclure was influenced by
Charles Fourier, who had already developed in France an
elaborate philosophy of social reform based upon the concept
of "attractive industry." In any case, a letter of Maclure's
from Mexico in 1830 contains the earliest known allusion to
Fourier in any writing produced in the Western Hemisphere —
antedating by nearly a decade the propaganda campaign of
Albert Brisbane which made Fourierism rather than Owenism
the most influential socialist doctrine of the 1840's in the
United States.10
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, New Orleans,
26 December 1826
... I have long conceived the idea of so arranging instruction
as to catinate [catenate] pleasurable sensations to the exercise of
all the usefull and necessary occupations of life, and rendering our
existance a constant amusement, while it put us on the most
certain, easy and nearest road to independence, as one of the
principle ingredients of happiness. How it is to be accomplished
is a little beyond my ken. As a new thing it must be found out
by various practical experiments, and, like most other information
that changes antient habits and customs, may succeed better by
example than precept. I have practiced on myself with complete
success, for all my present pleasures and gratifications were
acquired by habit, none of which were even in the rank of
pleasurable amusements untill I was past 30 years of age.
Perhaps all the common occupations of women, such as Sew-
ing, Cooking, Washing &c. can be transformed into an amusement
10 "Did you ever hear from Fourier of Lyons, the author of the two
volumes on education?" Maclure to Madame Fretageot, undated fragment,
written on the stationery that Maclure was using in his dated correspondence
only between February and October 1830, from Mexico. The allusion is to
Fourier's Traite de V association domestique-agricole (2 volumes, Paris,
1822). See Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., "Albert Brisbane — Propagandist for
Socialism in the 1840's," in New York History, XXVIII, 128-58 (April
1947), especially pp. 137-39.
380 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
by early habits, and might be the best mode of erradicating that
false pride that lowers the charracter of the being so much beneath
the dignity of his nature as to attach consequence or disgrace to
any occupation that is usefull either to himself or others. . . . What
harasses and torments the female population of Harmony, and no
small portion of the males, but that base sensation of attaching
consideration to the action in proportion to its uselessness and
extravagant cost, and disgrace and shame to all occupations
that are positively usefull, necessary and even indispensible to
comfortable existance. . . .
These meditations were interrupted by more immediate
tasks. In a letter of 29 December 1826 Maclure informed
Madame Fretageot that he was sending copperplates and a
printing press to the New Harmony School, and remarked that
"Lesueur's must be the work that begins the Harmony scientific
publishing," because Say's cabinet of materials was still de-
layed. But at the same time he worried about the future even
of that enterprise, and expressed the fear that Owen's "agregate
of incurables will poison the little energy there may be
among our society."
The danger was more immediate than that, however, for
Owen was beginning to call in question the arrangements he had
made with Maclure concerning the lands and buildings occupied
by the Education Society. Less than a week after Maclure
had left New Harmony for the winter, the New-Harmony
Gazette had published the following ominous paragraph, writ-
ten presumably by Owen himself :
Robert Owen [ ?] to the "New-Harmony Gazette,"
' 29 November 182611
. . . Another cause of some dissatisfaction among the members
of the Education Society, arose from misconception among them
as to the best line of separation between their lands and those of
the other Societies. They thought some other line, giving them
more land in a particular direction inconvenient to their neighbors,
was necessary for them : however, a little reflection will convince
11 Volume II, 70. Paul Brown reports that the statements "were said
to come from the pen of Mr. Owen the elder." Twelve Months, p. 79.
There is no reason to doubt that this was true.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 381
them of this error, — there being more land than is requisite for
ten other Communities ; and whenever they are prepared to require
more for cultivation, it can be obtained without any difficulty. It
deserves not a moment's consideration whether one Society has
a little more or a little less land at the present, provided a line shall
be adopted, that will prevent them from interfering with each
other's principles, objects, and arrangements. Shortly each
member of all these Societies will discover, that they have but one
and the same interest. These little matters, creating some
temporary difference of feeling, being once adjusted, the rapidity
of our progress will be much accelerated.
This statement was highly disingenuous. The line had
been fixed by written agreement, and the Education Society
insisted that the dispute had arisen solely because "several
months after the bargain had been struck, Mr. Owen wanted
to have back some of the land. — This claim of Mr. Owen, and
not our misconception of the lines, produced the dissatisfaction
above mentioned. . . . We thought, think yet, and shall go on
thinking, that Mr. Owen ought to adhere to his contract and
leave us in quiet possession of the land ceded to us."12 Their
protest, however, was refused publication in the New-Harmony
Gazette, and they promptly informed Maclure at New Orleans.
This was a threat to the whole material foundation of
Maclure's plans and to the investment he had already made
in the schools. On many previous occasions Owen had set
aside agreements made with the communities formed on his
estate, but in these instances no genuine consideration had ever
been paid him, and the enterprises were admitted failures
when the agreements were canceled. Neither argument applied
to the Education Society, and Maclure's reaction to the news
was prompt and emphatic.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, New Orleans,
3 January 1827
... I have been long in the habit of foreseeing every possible
unfortunate event that could happen, on purpose to have time to
12 Statement of Joseph Neef in behalf of the Education Society, printed
in Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 80-81.
382 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
prepare for them and contrive some remedy before the evill
comes, when it is then too late to find out all the resources within
reach. Following this old habit (which you may call a bad one) I
have been contemplating the possibility of a quarell between
Mr. Owen and me, which will certainly take place if he persists
in the declaration he has so often made of annulling the Lease, that
solemn contract made and executed before witnesses after being
read in a audible voyce to the whole party, and insists that his
son R[ober]t D. Owen, yourself, Applegath, Neef and all the party
who signed after him swindled him out of it. And even one of
his favorites, when we left Harmony, the backwoods lawyer
[Amos] Clark, who has got him so hoodwink, . . . is a party
to the deed.
If he attemps any such retraction I must hold to the Lease he
has assigned me for 49,000, on which I have paid 38,000, 7 years
before it was due, and shall follow it in every article or condition,
that is, not to pay one cent more before it is due. In that case
it will be imprudent to attemp the cultivation of any land with
such hostility in the vicinity to break down the fences and ravage
all the crops both by 4 feeted and 2 feeted animals, and even our
Gardens and orchard would not be safe from so formidable an
attack that pigs and members of an enraged Community might
make by night [l]y depradations. In that case we must be confined
to the walls of our Schools, which it is a pity we ever went without
them. For the Schools I will try to support, even after all the
expences [ ?] we burthen'd them with, of mecanics, farmers &c. are
disolved for want of occupation, for it was trusting to the good
sense of Mr. Owen and his communities that caused us to proceed
on so great a scale, but I fear by this time you will be convinced
that we were trusting to a broken reed.
Mr. Owen ought to consider that the most of his friends on
both sides of the Atlantic treat his schemes as visionary, and not
one mortal in existance can have the smallest confidence in his
mode of proceeding, nor for a moment conceive it possible that he
can change the confirmed habits of adults in 10 times the length
of time his enthusiazm allots for it. But he seems to be like all
wild schemers, both in morals and merchandize, totally to neglect
surrounding circumstances and only keep in view a figure of
the immagination, an ignus fatuus which in the end must lead
him far from his purpose.
In the fortunate event that none of those great causes of
disputes shall arrive, to prevent the minor causes of difference it
is necessary that you keep an exact account of the time when the
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 383
children come to your day school and the number that attended,
and that you have an account of children you might have had
before they took them all away, with the cloths of any they took
with them, all of which Neef ought likewise to do. And my
brother, assisted by Mr. Say or some other, ought to take an exact
account of all the buildings No. 1 Communities have occupied,
which the Schools paid for, and how long they have so lodged
in them, charging them rent at 10% on the prime cost of the
buildings, with conditions to keep them in repair. It may be
positively necessary to prevent our loosing all the furniture that
are in the different houses belonging to the schools that an
inventory be taken of all. . . .
It may perhaps be thought that propagating the Pestalozzian
may injure our Schools at Harmony, tho I think different. Dif-
fusion being my aim, could wish all the Schools in the Union
on the system. Besides, if every experiment was to cost what that
at Harmony will, it's but few that my means would enable me to
try, and I should much thank those that would take the rough
riding off my hands and wrangle with the ignorant mothers. . . .
P.S. I forgot the compliments of the season and hearty wishes
that this New Year may be more propitious to our favorite pursuits
than the last, which has been certainly worse than sterile by falling
into the train of an individual who flyes too high and expects, as
he wishes, to bring paradice down on earth too quick before anyone
is fit for the great change. But we must endeavour to make the
most of it, tho I believe if you had stopped at Philadelphia last
winter you would not have been yet working like a slave at Har-
mony to thankless people who don't know the good they get by you.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, New Orleans,
8 February 1827
. . . However I'm mortified by the folly of the community
and their legislation, it is only meant to put a stop to such
extravagance in the future without in the smallest degree deranging
my peace of mind or reflecting by way of blame on the past, for
it was full as much my fault as theirs, in putting it in their power
to throw away so much of my property, and was entirely in
immitation of Owen and his circumstances. And I shall now
immitate him in taking all under my direction and not permit
anything to be done untill my consent, or the agents I may intrust
in it, is given.
I perceive that the madman Phiquepal, under the supposed pro-
tection of Mr. Owen, is worse and worse, and that nothing will
384 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
satisfy him but the an[ni]hilation of our natural history. . . . His
avertion to sciences of which he is perfectly ignorant (which is
the greatest part of the most usefull) will permit [ ?] him to
destroy the industry of men whose little finger is worth his whole
body, by ruining our collections because his knowledge can't reach
them. In this he is similar to his protector, who won't encourage
anything but what he supposes he was the first to practice, and,
being totally ignorant of the natural sciences, would obstruct
education and destroy it entirely by depriving it of everything
usefull and natural. But all this anti sociable system must be
resisted, and I shall not suffer a cent more of my property to
be so wasted.
If I had 1/4 part of the money and 1/4 part of the collections
that has been made use of at Harmony, I could do more to reform
education here in 1 month than I can in 1 year with the stuborn
materials at Harmony, under the direction of a madman and sup-
ported by the Chief. But stopping now the squandering any more
of my property, I have enough to make future experiments under
more favorable situations and with more rational materials. . . .
I have long suspected that Mr. O. would take Phiquepal into
his communities. ... In that case, unless he pays the value of all
I lent to his schools or was bought with my money, he must not
be permitted to take them. He has made a store room in the loft
of the Church where he has deposited what he calls his, little or
none of which belongs to him, as I never gave him anything to
himself but a gold watch and a quantity of stockings and other
cloths, which, with all the cloths (and not a little) he bought with
my money, and the books on medicine, I don't claim. But all the
prints and other books & instruments I must claim as my property,
being only lent to him, like the house at Paris, to make the experi-
ment, in which I consider he has completely failed, by being of such
an irritable bad temper and worse habits, which render him intirely
unfit to teach. . . .
'Tis a doubt wither the immense prejudices, not to say a kind
of horror, excited against Mr. Owen's natural marriages and other
theories will permit the schools at Harmony to get any schollars
from abroad this year. We must therefore curtail our expences
and keep them as near the limmits of our production as possible,
for it will not serve any purpose to waste money on a useless
establishment that can benefit, like Phiquepal's teaching (even if
it were good for anything), only a few boys whose Parents scarce
no [know] the value of the education we are at such pains and
expence to give their children. . . .
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 385
I repent having sunk so much of my property at Harmony
because I could have done so much more good with it, and where
all Mr. Owen's population are spoiled, and no good can ever come
out of them. He has taken the wrong methode at least 8 times
during his apprentice] ship, and tho' perhaps his present organiza-
tion is better, it is intirely rendered nugatory by the injudicyous
choice he has made of his agents and those he entrusts, being men
of no practical knowledge from their previous experience or, as
he would say, from their surrounding circumstances in which they
have been floating, for fixed they never were anywhere, and they
are much to[o] old to learn. His application to my Brother for
more money gives me the history of his communities, that they are
living upon his money yet, under various pretences. But he must
not depend on me for more than the amount of what I bought
from him, or rather what the School Community leased from
him, part of which I have paid him thinking it would help him, but
I fear all will not do, and I must stop and go no further.
He is the most obstinate man I ever knew. It's that obstinacy
that I fear for our schools. He has not the smallest idea of a good
education and will not permit any to flourish within his reach. His
parot education to exhibit before strangers as at New Lanark is
the whole he knows. He is, like all enthusiazts, determined to
carry his point cout qui cout [coute que coute, i.e., cost what it
may] and will sacrifice every other consideration for it. Now the
truth is, his System, to the extent his theories carry him, is
impossible with the present generation, and his experiments will
most probably end when his money is finished.
He is no practical man himself, nor has he any about him, nor
ever can, as the moment a man is independent to differ from him
he discharges them, and has nothing but time serving sicofants
about him. He missed [ ?] Caleb Lowns, who is the most practical
man for managing any public undertaking I know in the United
States. He likewise lost the aid of Neef, who would have saved
him 40,000 dollars in the purchase of New Harmony. More than
that he was cheated by Rapp for want of a man of knowledge of
the local circumstances of the country to aid him. You'll say all
this is not his fault. I don't blame him for it, only to show that
we would be fools to trust to such an inexperienced Pilot who
will not change but persevere [ ?] to the last. . . .
With the letter just excerpted, Maclure began to use
enormous folio sheets of stationery and to include in a single
missive all the ideas, related or unrelated, that he wished to
386 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
communicate to his various colleagues at New Harmony. His
final letter from New Orleans was frankly a miscellany, in
which thoughts were jotted down as they occurred to him,
perhaps over a considerable period of time.
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, New Orleans,
24 February 1827
. . . Phiquepal. I'm glad to learn that Mr. O means to settle
him and his boys on Community No. 2.13 When he gets him on
his own pocket [ ?] he will find the utility of him. I don't
think it very delicate in Owen to encourage him to dissipate my
money, . . . which is all he has been doing ever since I knew
him, for which I have reaped nothing but disapointment and the
disgrace of spending my money on a madman. Examine what
he has done except bring into disgrace all connected with him. At
Paris in place of educating the pupils he had to be usefull in the
Schools, he treated one half of them so harshly that they left
him, and the other half are unfit for any serious employment, full
of caprices and whims like him self. . . . His transactions at
Harmony are on record. What has he done but wasted my
property? Has he been 1 cent benefit to the Schools? Is he now
of one 1 cent benefit to the School Society? On the contrary, is
not all his actions as much in contradiction to common sence as to
the interest and reputation of the schools? I forgot the cutting
out the prints from my most elegant works on natural history, and
disfiguring some thousands of my prints by cutting off all the
margins so that they cannot be handled without putting the fingers
on the figures. The damage he has done to my property would
require volumes to retail [ ?] , but the good I should be much
obliged to any one who could inform me of any, as it would be
some aleviation to my mortification on being such a fool as to be
the dup[e] of such a madman. . . .
The paragraf in the National Gazette,1* tho only a garbled part
of a letter, was all true. No man in his sences can see the connection
13 According to Paul Brown, "Mr. Phiquepal, the teacher, was, by order
of Mr. M'Clure, excluded from the church, where his pupils learned trades,
and likewise from the brick building. . . . He thence retreated to a room
in the house No. 1, in which by sufferance of Mr. Owen and his agents he
kept his school." Twelve Months, pp. 116-17. Maclure's statement that
Phiquepal was settled "on Community No. 2" cannot be correct, for that
community, otherwise known as Macluria, was by this time extinct.
14 See pp. 347-48, above.
MACLURE-ERETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 387
between the Community system and either of the speculative
opinions, the trinity of evils, or the 1st year of mental independ-
ence. It was quite on the old system of beginning where the^
ought to have ended. That letter was written in answer to a
desponding letter asserting [ ?] that the best friends of the system
must now give it up, to prove, as far as my logic could go, that
it had nothing to do with the practical part of the system and
was merely speculative opinion that I thought and think still was
premature and will do some harm and could not possible do any
good except to the self conceit of Mr. O., who was in a hurry to
be the first to proclaim a new erra. Tho I certainly did not intend
it for publication, nor do I think it was the individual to whom
I wrote who published it, but was confident of a friend who took
advantage and put it into print. I have written to him to publish
the whole letter, that contains as good a defense of the proclama-
tion as perhaps has been yet propounded, for it's all a mere theory
that cannot be practiced in perhaps some ages. And I have always
thought that the practice ought to have preceeded the theory, not
alarmed the present race (up to the throat with prejudices) with
the promulgation of principles that cannot for a long serious
[series] of years come to the relief of any of the sufferers.
You are perfectly correct in thinking it a new scheme that it is
difficult to know how to act and for that very reason caution in
going slowly and trying upon a small scale by way of experiment,
presenting the small end of the wage [wedge] not forcing the
but[t] end against inveterate prejudices. The present race are
perhaps unfit for it, which shows the necessity of teaching the
rising generation to think by a usefull and practical education. . . .
Neef is old and stuborn but has done much good and is still
capable of doing much more. Don't addopt Mr. Owen's opinions
on that head. He is a prejudiced person who likes to have his
foibles flattered, of which Neef is incapable. It is that which
attaches him, contrary to his common sence, to Phiquepal. . . .
You must not concur (notwithstanding the power full example
of O.) that I have taken up the good opinion and confidence in
Xeef on slight grounds, or the bad opinion and tottall distrust of
Phiquepal ['s] talents, abilities and solidity as a man and a teacher,
or the lowe state I hold him as a moral agent ; and have no hesitation
in predicting that before they know him half as long as I have, or
support his pecuniary extravagance 1/5 of the time, they will all
be of my opinion. . . .
Lesueur's work upon fish most probably must come out first
to occupy the engraver and printer untill Say's Cabinet [arrives],
388 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
concerning which I have heard nothing. He has enough of
copperplates already engraved to fully occupy the printer and
collorer. He has not yet said, nor perhaps examined, how much
of the 505 dollars advanced Mr. [Cornelius] Tiebout was for
collors, materials &c, and how much for expences. The blew and
yellow paint, not having a small package to put it in, must wait
untill I come, which will be between this and the first of April. If
he has neglected to order his Cabinet to be shipped so long as that
it will arrive here after I'm gone, I shall leave the best directions,
but cannot guarantee their care, for the indolence and negligence
attending slavery is in great perfection here. . . .
In defending the community system it is impossible not to
throw some blame upon the manner Mr. Owen has conducted all
that he has undertaken in this country, fo[r] he has succeeded
in no one of his plans of which he spoke so confidently that in
a few months all would be arranged. Had he given out his
schemes as experiments that must be tryed and changed so as to
suit circumstances, of which all were yet ignorant, no one would
have had any right to blame him, and then for his own interest he
should have made the experiment upon a small scale and with the
best materials that could have been found. It is the system, and
not the mode Mr. Owen has chose to put it in execution, that the
world or the friends of mankind or themselves are interested to
support. We are all egotists, and Mr. O. amongst the rest, but
few except Mr. O. has any particular interest in advocating the
particular mode he chose to put forward his new system. . . . No
man of common sence could have been in favor of any change in
Society that did not rest on its own merits, and not on the talents
or abilities of any individual. I think better every day of the
system in the exact proportion that experience has convinced me
that Mr. Owen is not the practical man to make it succeed. He's
being obliged, after two years' experience to discharge 150 of his
materials that he has been surrounding with his infalable circum-
stances,15 and I query very much if those that remain are any way
fit for cooperative society, as all their instruction has been to
consume not to produce, money having been substituted for
industry, negligence for care, wastefulness for ceconomy. But
it's a disagreeable, not to say a mortifying, subject.
15 Paul Brown refers to 1 Feb. 1827 as "Doomsday," when "about
twenty heads of families received what some people call 'walking papers.' '
Twelve Months, p. 85. Owen himself described the proceedings in a letter
to James M. Dorsey, New Harmony, 6 [?] Feb. 1827, unpublished MS. in
Indiana Historical Society Library.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 389
P.S. The month of my lodgings will be finished the 20 of
March, when I shall embrace [ ?] the first good steam boat for
Mount Vernon, so you need not write, as I shall be gone before
it can arrive. I'm tired of a slave country, and shall most probably
go farther south to avoid it next winter. . . .
You must let Neef take his own way because he is too old to
learn. . . . Union and concord in instruction destroys competition
and reduces all to a level. I know it's a cro[t]chet in Mr. Owen's
brain to reduce all things to his scale of measurement, but seeing
what use the Catholic teachers make of that harmony, as they call
it, to render all the schools equaly useless, for it's the constant
complaint against those who have addopted any of the Pestalozzi
methode that it destroys the harmony of the schools, the music
of the spheres. I wonder with whom . . . Phiquepal is in
harmony? It would be difficult to find any one in concord with
[him] on earth or the waters under the earth, as the old book says.
Go on steadily, but don't take so much on yourself. Let the
young ones work. All you should do is to teach your helpers. In
doing so you will be of more use in instructing one to do something
like what you do yourself, than teaching 20 children. Neef in his
long letter blames me for being persuaded by you against him. I
answered in a paragraf to my Brother that for a long time I took
knowledge from every one, but advice from none.
Maclure did not in fact return to New Harmony until two
months after the date of this communication, so he had time
to receive another letter from Madame Fretageot, the only
one of hers for the year that is now extant.
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, New Harmony,
2 March 1827
Dear Sir,
Your letter dated 28 January received yesterday. You have
I suppose received the letter in which I give an explanation of
a plan for the direction of the School here. The more I see of
Neef the more I am convinced that he is not the man you speak
so highly. His schollars have been influenced by thousands of
circumstances since they left him. Let us look and investigate
what he has done with his own children. Victor and Louisa have
been under his particular care, he says himself that they are the
result of his instruction. What result ! The former is a dull
thoughtless being, the other so found of reading novel that she
390 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
would forget to eat and sleep; both are unfit for their situation.
Mina is active, work much but without principle. When exausted
by an excess of several hours of hard work, she would allow herself
to let every thing running down with a perfect quietness untill, her
spirit raising again, she begins anew, always with the same
thoughtlessness. The others are growing under the very same
principle ; add to those defects the most vulgar manners and there
is the result of Neef's education.
When you say that I shall send Achille to him to get the founda-
tion of thinking ; really it is just as if you were to tell me to send
him to the Hindoos to get the knowledge of the Christian religion.
Neef himself is the most thoughtless creature that I know ; if he
had not his wife he would not have a penny and a shirt for his
use. What are then the principles of thoughts? Is it speculative
imagination ? Or is it that knowledge which enables human beings
to render them useful by their exertions, their activity?
If Say was only occupied with the dissection of his Insects, I
would consider him just as I do with Tro[o]st and Lesueur. They
are shut up in their cabinet, the former with speculative
Mineralogy, the latter with the collection of Fish, Shells, Birds,
Drawings, perfectly useless to the happiness of humankind. Yet
calculate the expense they carry with them and tell me what benefit
will arise from their work to the present and even the future
generations. That is the case with all Scientific people. Their
knowledge is not only useless (because their is no application of
it) but hurtful; it carries the mind astray, in fact it is false
knowledge. The only one that I know who has been useful in
Mineralogy is yourself because you have applied it to its true
application. Now, Phiquepal is an enthousiast. I know it ; and
shall not send back Achille to him. However, if he was directed
he would be of some utility. You know that Chemistry rose from
Alchimy, and those that were in search of the Philosophical stone
made several discoveries that are very useful. It is really the case
with our man, but he is incapable of making use of the things
that he finds out.
My school is going on pretty well. The twelve young men
are now entirely in the House. They board and sleep here ; their
progress are very obvious as well in their study as in their
manner. I get up regularly at four o'clock. The lessons for that
class finishes at half after six, they go their different occupations
till eight, they return for their breakfast; and at nine to eleven
the class of the children under twelve; at two o'clock the same
children till four; at six all the children above twelve, including
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 391
the boarders, till eight. The other hours I am occupied cooking
for the whole family. I may say that I have but very little the
occasion of wearing out the chairs of the house, having not a single
female to help me. The whole work is made by the boys when
they return from their work. The two little Sistare16 are gone
last week with Cousin Douglas. I need not to tell that I feel their
absence very much, after having had those children nearly six
years with me; but such are the effect of ignorance; I expected it.
Mr. Owen is now arranging [h]is population in such way that
they must provide for themselves or quit the society. I think he
has taken the only mean to ascertain exactly what are truly the
useful ones, and we may conjecture that it will raise the mind
of the leazy when they are compelled to work for their own
support. Robert Dale [Owen] is now and will be a man of a
supperior mind. The more I am acquainted with him the more
I am convinced of his supperiority. . . .
I really wish for your return on account of the school. It
cannot stand as it is. I reppeat that the whole must be under the
same regulation, and if Neef is to stay I leave the whole altogether
because it is quite impossible that I can ever agree with him. I am
preparing teachers that will understand me. If I am to direct
they will be ready for the time. Consider that seriously and have
your decision ready for your arrival. It is quite time to act upon
these principles for the sake of the children.
I remain your Most affectionate,
M. D. Fretageot. . . .
Maclure must have been dismayed by Madame Fretageot's
letter, with its evidence of her irreconcilable antagonism toward
Neef and her apparent acceptance of the antiscientific views of
Phiquepal. But an even more serious danger was threatening
his educational enterprise when he reached New Harmony on
20 April 1827, the danger that the imprudence of his colleague,
Owen, might wipe out his own financial investment.
An installment of $20,000 on the original purchase price
of New Harmony was due the Rappites on 1 May 1827. About
the time of Maclure's return Frederick Rapp came to New
Harmony to receive the money and to secure, if possible, ad-
16 Lucy Way Sistaire, the third sister, had married Thomas Say on
4 Jan. 1827. New-Harmony Gazette, II, 119 (10 Jan. 1827). Compare
Maclure, 11 Aug. 1826, above.
392 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
vance payment of the remaining installment of the same
amount, due a year later. Owen agreed to discount the latter
note, and then applied to Maclure for funds to meet the
payment of $40,000, less interest.17
The time had obviously come to define and permanently
settle the financial obligations existing between the two men.
Owen still insisted that theirs was a full partnership and that
Maclure was liable for some $90,000 more.18 Maclure, on the
other hand, insisted that he owed Owen a maximum of
$21,000 — that is, $1 1,000 on the lease to the Education Society
and no more than $10,000 as "forfeiture" on his guarantee
of Owen's losses.
Maclure proposed a compromise that would settle the matter
for good and all. He would pay the remaining $40,000 to the
Rappites if Owen would give him a deed in fee simple to the
property the Education Society had been using. Owen was
willing to give a deed in place of the previous lease, but only
if restrictions were embodied in the conveyance itself providing
that the real estate should "be applied to the benefit of children
on the property, and be for ever preserved to promote the
objects of the social system."19 Maclure's purposes were as
17 The two principal sources for the financial controversy of April-May
1827 are Robert Owen, "Address . . . at a Public Meeting, held at the
Franklin Institute in . . . Philadelphia, on . . . June 27, 1827; To which
is added, An Exposition of the Pecuniary Transactions between that
Gentleman and William Maclure," taken in shorthand by M. T. C. Gould,
reprinted (from a pamphlet) in the New-Harmony Gazette, II, 353-54 (15
Aug. 1827) ; and Paul Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 97-98. William Maclure
himself made no public statement. The present narrative is based on these
two contemporary accounts, interpreted in the light of the letters of Maclure
printed above, and of the documents cited on pp. 334-36 above and in the
footnotes immediately below.
18 This was the amount he claimed in the litigation with Maclure. See
p. 393 and n. 20, below. Owen believed that he and Maclure were obligated to
invest equal amounts. Maclure had already put in $38,000. See his letter
of 3 Jan. 1827, above. Owen therefore believed that Maclure's total invest-
ment, in order to match his own, should be approximately $128,000. Accord-
ing to the estimate I have given, pp. 335-36, n. 17, above, Owen had invested
at least $140,000 at New Harmony by this time. He was therefore not
asking Maclure to match certain of his own expenditures.
19 Owen, "Address . . . June 27, 1827," loc. cit.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 393
disinterested as Owen's, but he had had enough of Owen's
vague and high-flown rhetoric, and he refused to be entangled
in it any longer.
It took drastic measures to force a solution. Maclure paid
Rapp and obtained from him the bonds that represented Owen's
indebtedness for $40,000. Having thus become Owen's credi-
tor, Maclure filed suit against him, sending Thomas Say to
Mount Vernon as his agent. At the same time, on 30 April
1827, he gave public notice that he was not responsible for any
transactions that Owen "may have done, or may attempt to
do," in the name of their alleged partnership. Owen replied
by giving public notice that the partnership was "in full
force," and by filing a counterclaim for $90,000, which he felt
was due from Maclure to the partnership account.20 The legal
maneuvers — such as Owen's successful eluding of the sheriff —
were sufficiently picturesque to keep the community agog and
to obscure for the general public the purpose of the litigation,
which was simply to settle Maclure's financial liability. This
end was speedily accomplished by the appointment of two
arbitrators, who immediately fixed Maclure's remaining in-
debtedness to Owen at $5,ooo.21 Payment was made the
next day, and on 3 May 1827 Owen gave Maclure an
unrestricted deed to 490 acres at New Harmony, the sum
of $44,000 being named as the consideration.22 The deed
20 Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 97-98 ; Owen, "Address . . . June 27,
1827," loc. cit.
21 Taking into account Maclure's payment to Rapp, the arbitrator's
award was approximately $45,000, exactly half of what Owen had claimed.
The consideration stated in the deed of 3 May 1827 (see next footnote) was
$44,000. This suggests that Maclure received a discount of $1,000, or
5 per cent, from Rapp for paying in advance. Owen asserted that he had
struck a bargain with Rapp which called for a payment $500 less than
Maclure actually made, but for this there is no supporting evidence.
Maclure's previous advances to Owen, totaling $38,000 (see his letter of
3 Jan. 1827, above), were apparently written off by all parties; he thus
shared the losses on the New Harmony Community to that extent. See
pp. 335-36, n. 17, above.
23 Posey County, Indiana, "Deeds," liber D, p. 390. The plat of this
property was not recorded until 18 Feb. 1842. Liber L, p. 65. Pending the
relinquishment of Mrs. Owen's dower rights, Maclure received as security
394 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
was recorded on the 23d, and on 27 August, when the Posey
County Circuit Court convened again, the various legal actions
were, on motion, dismissed.23
The litigation and subsequent settlement constituted a
clear-cut break between Maclure and Owen so far as their
financial relations were concerned, but the significance of the
episode can easily be exaggerated. Owen barely alluded to it
in an address he made the following Sunday, 6 May 1827,
though he dwelt at length upon other differences with Maclure.
A week later Neef wrote a vitriolic reply to Owen's address, but
made no allusion to the lawsuit.24 Only when Owen went East
and discovered what a nation-wide furor the episode had
created did he feel it necessary to discuss the subject publicly,
which he did on 27 June 1827 in Philadelphia. There was
some bitterness in his charge that Maclure "is sometimes
unfortunate, and the state of his mind becomes irritable, and
his feelings are worked up by those around him, into such
a state very much beyond rationality."25 Aside from such
personalities, however, Owen's statement was not particularly
intemperate, and Maclure took no notice of it.
In these comments of 6 May and 27 June, Owen made it
clear that he considered the fundamental issue to have been
one of educational policy. This interpretation seems correct.
from Owen a mortgage, dated 30 April 1828, on additional property. Liber
E, p. 56. On the same day Owen borrowed $4,500 from Madame Fretageot,
as agent for Maclure, on another mortgage. Liber E, p. 59. These trans-
actions are mentioned in the correspondence of Maclure and Madame
Fretageot, 12 Dec. 1828 to 8 April 1829, below.
23 Posey County Circuit Court, "Order Book," liber C, p. 172. The
cases were Thomas Say, assignee, v. Robert Owen; and Robert Owen v.
Wm. McClure [sic.].
24 Owen, ''Address ... on Sunday, the 6th of May, 1827, in the
New-Harmony Hall," in New-Harmony Gazette, II, 254-55 (9 May 1827) ;
Joseph Neef, "A Letter to Robert Owen, Concerning his Valedictory
Address," printed in Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 106-16. Brown wrote a
reply of his own to Owen, dated 25 May 1827, in which he did discuss the
lawsuit, but contemptuously, as a "squabble about individual property, be-
tween two rich men." Ibid., p. 127; the entire letter occupies pp. 118-28.
25 Owen, "Address . . . June 27, 1827," he. cit.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 395
From August 1826 on, Owen had been anxious to supersede
Maclure's schools with others more in accord with his own
ideas. Owen's scheme for regular classes in the Hall for all
the inhabitants of New Harmony had fallen through, as had
his plan for a separate school under Mrs. Ashworth, mentioned
in Maclure's letter of 28 November 1826. But his effort to
seduce certain of the teachers from their allegiance to Maclure's
plans had apparently succeeded in the case of Phiquepal and had
come close to success in the case of Madame Fretageot. More-
over, the restrictive clauses that Owen was arguing for in April
1827 in the proposed deed to Maclure touched upon educational
matters, and could have been interpreted as giving him some
control over the policy of Maclure's schools.
In any case, educational policies were uppermost in Owen's
mind at the time of the lawsuit, and immediately afterward
he lashed out at the Education Society, in effect blaming it for
all the failures at New Harmony. "If the Schools had been
in full operation," he said on 6 May 1827, "upon the very
superior plan which I had been led to expect, ... it would
have been, I think, practicable, even with such materials, ... to
have succeeded in amalgamating the whole [population of New
Harmony] into a Community. . . . But, in consequence of
the unlimited confidence which I place in these individuals to
execute this the most important part of my plan, in a very
superior manner, you all know how much I have been dis-
appointed."28 And his parting shot, before he left New
Harmony on 1 June 1827, was to turn over three thousand
dollars to the former treasurer of Miami University, James M.
Dorsey, newly arrived at New Harmony, to set up a complete
set of schools in opposition to Maclure's.27
28 Owen, "Address . . . 6th of May, 1827," in New-Harmony Gazette,
II, 254 (9 May 1827).
27 New-Harmony Gazette, II, 279 (30 May 1827); see also II, 353
(15 Aug. 1827). Dorsey's arrival is mentioned, ibid.,, II, 270 (23 May 1827) ;
Owen's departure, II, 286 (13 June 1827). Owen gave instructions concern-
ing the schools in a letter to Dorsey, New Harmony, 31 May 1827, MS. in
Indiana Historical Society Library.
3% INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Owen's gesture was an idle one, for the communitarian
experiment at New Harmony was already moribund. The
"trust" established in October 1826 had succeeded in weeding
out members, but had utterly failed to create a working
community. Late in January 1827, therefore, Owen had
announced still another policy — his fifth reorganization, if
such a term can be applied to the chaos that then reigned and
continued to reign. The idea of establishing a community in
the town of New Harmony was frankly abandoned. Instead
Owen offered to lease lands in the surrounding territory to
any group, however small, that would organize itself as a
community on his principles.28 At least one speculator,
William G. Taylor, from Ohio, saw his opportunity, and
Community No. 4, which was announced on 21 January 1827
under Taylor's auspices, proved a gigantic swindle.29 Other
projects were so tiny as to be insignificant or failed to ma-
terialize at all. Though the New-Harmony Gazette had in
effect admitted failure as early as 28 March 1827,30 Robert
Owen clung to his illusions and on 27 May 1827, five days
before his departure, delivered an address "to the Ten Social
Colonies of Equality and Common Property, Forming on the
28 New-Harmony Gazette, II, 206, 255, 278-79 (28 March, 9 and 30
May 1827) ; Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 83-86, 92-94; R. D. Owen, Thread-
ing My Way (New York, 1874), p. 289. This was the reorganization
referred to in footnote 15 above.
29 New-Harmony Gazette, II, 142, 207; III, 375 (31 Jan., 28 March
1827; 17 Sept. 1828) ; leases, Owen to Taylor, 13 Jan., and 14 Feb. 1827, in
Posey County, "Deeds," liber E, pp. 35-39 ; Taylor v. Owen et al., decided
1 March 1828, in Posey County Circuit Court, "Complete Record," liber B,
pp. 485-500; subsequent suits by Taylor and Owen against each other, listed
in Posey County Circuit Court, "General Index to Civil Causes" ; Brown,
Twelve Months, pp. 83-85, 96; letter from Richard Owen, quoted in
George B. Lockwood, The New Harmony Movement (New York, 1905),
p. 156; data collected in 1842 by A. J. Macdonald, "Manuscripts and
Collections" (Yale University Library), pp. 535-614, quoted in Noyes, His-
tory of American Socialisms, pp. 47-48.
30 New-Harmony Gazette, II, 206-7 (28 March 1827), editorial written
by William and Robert Dale Owen. See R. D. Owen, Threading My Way
(New York, 1874), pp. 288-89.
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 397
New-Harmony Estate."31 It was a tour de force in the use of
the future tense. Only two responsible organizations were
actually in existence — the Education Society and Feiba-Peveli.
The town of New Harmony was numbered among the ten,
though Owen himself admitted that it would "remain sometime
longer as a training school, before it can be made a part of
a regular and full community." The remaining seven comprised
Taylor's "Community No. 4," the vacant buildings of defunct
Macluria, awaiting new tenants ; a log cabin where four families
huddled together as a community; a cluster of three or four
German families three miles south of the town ; and three
scattered huts inhabited by single families, each ranking as a
colony of equality and common property^
32
81 New-Harmony Gazette, II, 278-79 (30 May 1827); see also Owen's
address of 6 May, ibid., 254-55 (9 May 1827), where he speaks of "eight
independent Communities, . . . exclusive of Mr. Maclure's . . . and of
the town of New-Harmony."
82 See Brown, Twelve Months, p. 122.
V. EPILOGUE
IX Tith Owen's communitarian experiment ended and the
* * title to his own property settled, Maclure saw clear sailing
ahead for his educational venture. His stay in New Harmony
from April 1827 until near the end of the year was the longest
he ever made there, and during that period he perfected the
organization of his School of Industry. Pursuant to ideas he
had outlined earlier to Madame Fretageot, he decided to try
out his educational plans upon orphans. On 14 May 1827, less
than two weeks after the settlement of his lawsuit with Owen, he
advertised that he was prepared to receive "a few of both sexes,
not under the age of twelve years," into his "Schools for the
instruction of Orphans in all useful knowledge as well as in
the useful arts."1 That there might be no mistake about what
he considered useful, he prepared an essay "On Education"
that ran through twenty-five weekly installments in the New-
Harmony Gazette, from 20 June through 5 December 1827.2
The scientific and publication programs also went forward
as Maclure had planned. By 29 August 1827 the complicated
task of establishing a scientific press — co-ordinating research,
engraving, printing, and hand coloring — had been successfully
completed, and the first advertisement appeared: "Proposals
for publishing, by subscription, a work on the FISH OF
NORTH AMERICA,— with Plates, drawn and colored from
1 New-Harmony Gazette, II, 263 (16 May 1827), repeated in subsequent
issues.
2 Ibid., II, 292, and subsequent installments to III, 68. These articles
were reprinted, with order slightly altered, in Maclure, Opinions on Various
Subjects, I, 48-124. Despite his generosity in furnishing space, the editor
of the Gazette confessed that he had "no personal knowledge as regards the
progress either of the Society [for Mutual Instruction] or of the School
[of Industry]." And he concluded his curiously aloof editorial by saying,
"We cannot doubt the ability of Mr. Wm. Maclure, . . . who projected and
supports the school, which he is pleased to call the 'School of Industry at
New-Harmony,' to redeem the pledge he . . . gives to the public" in his
advertisement. Volume III, 70 (5 Dec. 1827).
(398)
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 399
Nature, by C. A. Lesueur."3 A scientific journal had been
under discussion as early as January 1827,4 but it was a year
before the first number issued from the press on 16 January
1828. The plan had been altered somewhat, to emphasize
"practical education" as well as science, and the resulting
Disseminator of Useful Knowledge; Containing Hints to the
Youth of the United States — From the "School of Industry'
was something of a hybrid, attracting less attention than it
deserved in the two fields it covered. In the history of New
Harmony, however, its establishment was an event of consider-
able significance. By this time the New-Harmony Gazette had
ceased to be an organ of socialistic reform, and with its transfer
to New York in March 1829 (under the new title of The Free
Enquirer), the Disseminator was left as the only mouthpiece of
the New Harmony experiment. The experiment itself was
now Maclure's alone, dedicated ultimately to social reform, but
committed to the use of educational, not communitarian, means.
Though the experiment was Maclure's, he could not remain
in New Harmony to conduct it himself, for his health required
a milder climate. He had sought this at New Orleans in the
winter of 1826-27, but slavery was distasteful to him and the
next winter he went to Mexico. He was back in the United
States again in 1828, but from December of that year until his
death he was almost continuously a resident of the republic to
the south. For the carrying out of his programs at New
Harmony he depended upon Thomas Say and Madame
Fretageot. The former guided the scientific work and edited
the Disseminator, but Madame Fretageot became the responsible
business administrator of the enterprise. On the eve of
Maclure's first departure for Mexico he gave Madame
Fretageot his power of attorney, dated 7 December i827,B and
three years later, in a letter of 1830 to Say, he reiterated his
8 New-Harmony Gazette, II, 375 (29 Aug. 1827), advertisement, repeated
in subsequent issues. Six weeks later the prospectus of Say's American
Conchology was similarly published. Ibid., Ill, 7 (10 Oct. 1827).
*"Pelham Letters," p. 415.
5 Posey County, "Deeds," liber E, p. 260. It was recorded on 27 May 1830.
400 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
confidence in her. "I am determined," he wrote, "that she
shall have the management of my affairs at New Harmony
while either of us lives."8
Owen's ceaseless activities caused Maclure and Madame
Fretageot little concern. His debate with Alexander Campbell,
co-founder of the denomination of Disciples of Christ, and his
visionary Mexican scheme brought the three into contact
briefly. Owen was in New Harmony in the spring of 1828.
Early in 1829 he was in Mexico where he saw Maclure, and
was again in New Harmony prior to his debates with Campbell
in Cincinnati in April.7 But neither Maclure nor Madame
Fretageot was in a mood in 1828 and 1829 to heed his
outpourings. Across their winter skies he flashed like a
meteor, distracting their attention for only a moment from
the mundane concerns of the school and the press that Madame
Fretageot was managing at New Harmony and that Maclure
was watching with benevolent interest from Mexico.
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, New Harmony,
10 October 1828
My Dear Friend
I received yesterday a paquet of letters from Paris by
Mr. Irving, in which he congratulates your good judgement on
your present opinion of Mr. Owen['s] system, and also on your
present school. . . .
F[ ranees] Wright is oblige to go immediately to Nashoba. . . .
She goes with her sister and Mr. [Robert L.] Jenning[s]. The
last his [is] a good being but no steadiness, in fact no head.
6 Quoted in Weiss and Ziegler, Thomas Say, p. 142. See also pp. 136-58.
7 See his own account in Robert Owen's Opening Speech, and His
Reply to the ReKv. Alex. Campbell, in the Recent Public Discussion in Cin-
cinnati, to Prove That the Principles of All Religions Are Erroneous, and
That Their Practice Is Injurious to the Human Race. Also, Mr. Owen's
Memorial to the Republic of Mexico, and a Narrative of the Proceedings
Thereon, Which Led to the Promise of the Mexican Government, to Place
a District, One Hundred and Fifty Miles Broad, Along the Whole Line of
Frontier Bordering on the U. States, under Mr. Owen's Jurisdiction, for
the Purpose of Establishing a New Political and Moral System of Govern-
ment, Founded on the Laws of Nature, as Explained in the Above Debate
with Mr. Campbell (Cincinnati: Published for Robert Owen, 1829).
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 401
Every one of the No. 1 do not possess altogether reunited
that portion of good sense so necessary in every undertaking.
It seems that [they] do not see the advantages under their eyes
but that they are looking towards every thing but their own
interest. I had yesterday a long conversation with them. They
came to consult me about their business. I told Frances the best
for her is to sell her plantation. As she cannot manage it herself,
she cannot expect to find one that would do it with the same
interest. To Jennings, that if he wishes to succeed he must be
steady. And as he has but one schollar he can choose some boys
in the town and begin a class that will give him credit when some
persons will come to visit his school, and that is the only way he
has to inspire confidence. But if he runs about and spend the
little money he has, he will never succeed. To Robert Dale
[Owen], that he and his brothers should work to their printing
office and spare by that means about 1000 dollars a year, to
reduce their expenses, sell their horses, they are young enough
to walk, &c. This advice that I gave came from their complaint
about Phiquepal. They cannot manage him, and he means to manage
them. In fact, they are in a dreadful confusion. I do not expect
they will understand my advice. They laugh heartily at it and
said it would be good for me but they had higher views than
that. Well, my friends, said I, I know that I am a booby, but
I shall not be hanged for that. . . .
Yours,
M D Fretageot
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, New Harmony,
12 December 1828
. . . Robert Dale [Owen] has received a letter from his
father, who was to leave England the 16th of Oc[to]ber and
probably will be here in the end of this month. . . .
I have received last week a letter from Marietta, on account
of the Sylva, by Mr. S. P. Hildreth8 saying he can procure several
suscribers from that town and environs; answered him that if he
procures 20 there will be one for him. I have no doubt it
will succeed. . . .
Mr. [Cornelius] Tiebout will try this week to draw some prints
of the trees for two purposes, first try the plates, and 2d to give
to our boys the possibility of exercising themselves before hand
8 Samuel Prescott Hildreth (1783-1863), of Marietta, Ohio, physician,
naturalist, and historian of the Old Northwest.
402 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
for the painting of it. I will have about 200 on our common
drawing paper, it is to say 25 plates and a dozen of each, to
give them a fair oportunity to learn.
[P.S.] I hope you will not be in a hurry in establishing a free
press or any thing in a country [Mexico] that requires some
years longer before it be settled on a sound foundation. And also
there is yet not one of our pupils positively capable of any
undertaking of some importance. And you mean to succeed,
remember that it will be only when it will be put in the hands
of those that will be thouroughly brought up in our principles, and
two years will enable several of them to any thing.
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, New Harmony,
9 January 1829
I wish, My dear friend, that this letter could reach you before
the arrival of Mr. Owen in Mexico. Yesterday Robert [Dale
Owen] came to me with a letter of his father informing him that
Messrs. Rothshild [sic] and Baring being possessors of an im-
mense tract of land in Texas territory, have intrusted him with
the power of forming Community on the said land, and have
directed him to Mexico to consult with the government on that
subject. The immense riches of those two individuals cannot
be better employed than that. Whatever may be the success, it
will at least start the population in a country much in want of
it; and if the management is not as good as to insure the success,
yet the principle of it cannot fail to strike the prejudices out of
the minds of those who will be collected there together if the
undertaking takes place. In viewing the subject under that point
you may feel incline at least, not to prevent it, and for the sake
of public interest. Now it will be something for private one, I
should not be sorry if he were engaged busily some hundred
miles affar.
He announces also that he brings with him money enough to
settle his business with you and Frances [Wright], having sold
all he had remained of his share at New Lanark. Says he will be
returned in March to keep his appointment with Campbell at
Cincinnati in April. As I suppose you will meet each other in your
rambling about, try that I do not meet with difficulties at his return
in settling our affairs. It should be easier if he returns satisfied
with you. Better the quarrel be bettween him and me, it is of
no consequence ; but it is, bettween you two. . . .
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 403
Maclure to Madame Fretageot, Jalapa, Mexico,
28 January 1829
On Thursday the 22d January Robert Owen pop[p]ed in on
us at the French hotel at Jalapa, from London by Saint Domingo
and Jamaica in the Brittish packet landed at Vera Cruz, bound
to Mexico, to whose government he has addressed a memoir
published in most of the Brittish prints, requesting the State of
Texas to make his experiment in, with all his usual enthusiasm tho
I think a little abated of his certainty of success in practice.
This unexpected visit did not astonish me so much as the strong
recommendatory letters he had to all the authorities of this country
from all their ministers in London, as well as introductions to all
the ministers here from the men in power in Britain. He was
particularly recommended to the Bishops who from his success, as
he says, with those of England he has great hopes of convincing
them that it is their interest to patronise and support the new order
of things he wishes to introduce, founded on what he calls the
divine laws of nature that man is the child of circumstances and
has neither the forming of his moral or physical existance.
So long as he stops at theory all will do well. But should he
attempt practice, the second edition of New Harmony will most
probably be published to the world contradicting his theories and
bringing loss and disapointment on all that have placed faith
and confidence in him.
He says that Birkbeck, Brougham9 and all the other liberal
reformers are preparing the public for his great change as fast as
the knowledge of the day is capable of understanding their
doctrines. I have been trying to show him how far his system is
in advance of any of theirs, and what an immense chasm of
misteriouse space (incomprehensible to those who are to benefit
by it) lays between his radical cure of all evils and the partial
remedy of the most prominant, oppressive and irrational habits
whose reform is contemplated by the other reformers in both
9 Henry Brougham, later Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868) had
done much to make Fellenberg's ideas known in England through his testi-
mony before the parliamentary Select Committee on the Education of the
Lower Orders in 1818, at the time Owen's public propaganda was beginning.
His extensive efforts for educational reform in the 1820's included associa-
tion with Dr. George Birkbeck (1776-1841) in establishing the London
Mechanics' Institution (later the Birkbeck Institution) in 1824, an outgrowth
of courses for workingmen that Birkbeck had inaugurated in Glasgow as
early as 1800.
404 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Church and State ; that this moral chasm ought to be considered
as a physical ditch drawn round the old Castle of antient prejudice,
not only impassible in itself in the present state of knowledge, but
fortified by all the instruments of defence invented by all the
talent and acumen of both church and state for many centuries. He
always returns to the fine finish it would make in society, and neg-
lects like all enthusiastic speculators the means of accomplishing.
He seems completely disgusted with the U. S. and rather
thinks Britain a fitter field than any to be found with you, where
he will most probably return after preaching a little the principles
of his system, which he has organized into a complete code of
laws, rules and regulation, which only awaits the knowledge of
the millions to put it in execution, as I am af fraid he will never get
the help of the governors of either church or state to assist him.
Mr. Owen says he has sold all his own as well as his sons'
shares in the cotton mills at New Lanark for a good price, and
has given orders to Robert Dale to draw for and pay off our
mortgage and Miss Wright's. R[ober]t Dale will of course draw
on Britain and pass his drafts at Philadelphia or New York and
give you a draft on his agent there for principle and interest,
which I hope will be in time to pay my note of hand to Rapp for
3,666 67/100 due the 24 April. I told him Mr. Hall charged
125$ for drawing the two mortgages &c, and that it was the
custom in all countries for the one who received the money to
pay the expense of the deeds. He talked of an agreement
concerning which I knew nothing, not being present, but in this
he is the Old Man to pay nothing he thinks he can avoid. . . .
[Allen] Ward has been occupied this few days in coppying
Owen's reasoning that he is to have with Campbell. In case of
accident to him they may be sent to R[ober]t Dale, who is to take
his place, for he seems at present decided to be punctual to his
engagements with Campbell, and seems to promise himself great ad-
vantage from that mode of publishing his opinions to the world. . . .
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, New Harmony,
30 January 1829
No letter yet, My dear friend. It seems a century since I have
heard of you. Our little place furnishes some news that you
must have. Frances Wright has made wonders in her preaching
at Baltimore, Philadelphia and specially New York. It is decided
that they will transport their establishment in that last town.
Robert Dale is going there for helping an institution on the plan
of Epicurus in Athens, as well as the continuation of his paper
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 405
under the title of The Free enquirer. Thus we lose them all, and
if I am not mistaken it will prove beneficial to our establishment
in removing the public opinion from our place. And the spreading
of liberal principles abroad will smoothe our ways. The younger
part of the family seems to be destined for Cincinnata where a like
institution is to take place, but it is not yet decided when. . . .
Madame Fretageot to Maclure, New Harmony,
12 March and 8 April 1829
March the 12th, 1829
. . . When I was informed of Mr. Owen['s] plan toward
Mexico I wrote to you immediately in order that you would not
be so much astonished but my letter did not reach you before
his arrival. . . . Mr. Owen told you that there were arrangements
between him and me concerning the payment of Mr. Hall. Cer-
tainly there has never been any such thing between him and me. He
certainly makes some dreams about that. . . .
April the 8th, 1829
I began this letter 3 weeks ago and since that time I have been
so much engaged that I could not spare a moment to finish it. Since
that time many things have happened that I did not expect.
First Mr. Owen arrived the 30th of March, . . . remained
here a few days and went immediately to Cincinnata to meet
Mr. Campbell. I will inform you with his success or his deffeat
according the effect produced in the public mind. He did not
give me the relinquishment of his wife, and the Mortgage will
remain in my hands until I have it in good condition. I cannot
say if he says the truth when he pretends that it has been
sent long before his arrival, but what I know well is that it has
not been received. . . .
I think that all the copper plates are here. I have counted
upwards 1300. Tiebout has already began cleaning and repairing
them, and will continue until it is finished. I do not know if we
will be able to print soon any of them, because I think better to
go on with the Sylva. I have about 30 or 40 suscribers, and my
intention is to have only 100 or 150 coppies, that will be
enough. ... If you could find a certain number of suscriber
in Mexico, I could have it easely translated in Spanish and then
we could have an edition in that language. . . .
Our school goes on and the town begins to have a much better
spirit. They begin to say that there is only those that live in
our side that thrive the best. Having occupied several of them
at the fence, tho I paid low wages yet as they had their money
406 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
every week they were much satisfies, and wish that I could always
employ them. Our boys work steadily, and if every thing is not
y<A as I wish, however it is better every day.
The fence is most finished in spite of the severe winter we
have had, which lasted till the 26 of March. This has been much
against me, as I could not engage the land without knowing if
I could have the fence finished in time. Now I have two ploughs,
one with our oxen and the other with the horses. Then I will
plant as much corn as possible this year in order to put the land
in good order, and next I will rent it on good term. As we do the
whole most by ourselves, the crop will pay the expences or nearly
so. The orchard has been trimmed very well in the course of two
months work and has cost 28 dollars. In fact I do what 1 think
the best. The result will show if it is well.
And remain with much affection yours
M D Fretageot
In this laborious but peaceful atmosphere Madame Fretageot
continued to direct the educational enterprise at New Harmony
for another two and a half years. On 4 November 183 1 she
bade farewell to the community where she had served longer
and more continuously than any other leader in the New Har-
mony experiment. After spending a year in Paris she sailed
again for the New World, this time to visit Maclure in
Mexico. Her last letter to him, dated from Vera Cruz on
17 February 1833, expressed her hope of seeing him "as soon
as possible." That her hope was gratified seems certain, but
her visit was of short duration, for she died in Mexico City
sometime in April.
New Harmony was Madame Fretageot's monument as truly
as it was Rapp's or Owen's or Maclure's. The wise management
she had given at the outset enabled Maclure's threefold enter-
prise to function effectively throughout the succeeding decade,
and to spread its influence beyond. Maclure, who lived until
23 March 1840, had the satisfaction of witnessing much of
this. The School of Industry was supplemented in 1838 by
the Workingmen's Institute, and educational ideas radiated
from New Harmony to good effect throughout the state. In
science New Harmony retained its eminence for at least a
MACLURE-FRETAGEOT CORRESPONDENCE 407
quarter of a century, despite the death of Thomas Say in
1834. In the field of publishing its achievement was unique
Lesueur's work on fish, the first great project, was never com-
pleted, but Thomas Say's American Conchology; or, Descrip-
tions of the Shells of North America, began to issue from
the School Press in 1830, while Madame Fretageot was
still in New Harmony, and went forward steadily until the
seventh and last part appeared four years after its author's
death. Not until 184 1 was the North American Sylva of
Frangois Andre Michaux published, in three handsome volumes
with 156 colored plates. Though Maclure had died in Mexico
the previous year, this publication was his conception, planned
fifteen years before when he brought to America the copper-
plates of the original edition. And it was a work that could
never have been carried to successful completion save for the
labors of Madame Fretageot, from 1828 on, in gathering
subscriptions and in co-ordinating to productive ends the effort
of scientists, printers, teachers, and pupils at New Harmony.10
One great labor of love the School Press performed — the
republication in three volumes of Maclure's contributions to
the New-Harmony Gazette and the Disseminator. These
Opinions on Various Subjects, Dedicated to the Industrious
Producers11 have been generally, though unjustifiably, neg-
10 See Maclure to Silliman, 2 May 1825, p. 323, n. 4, above ; and Madame
Fretageot's letters of 12 Dec. 1828 and 8 April 1829, above.
11 Variants among different copies of this work indicate that it had an
irregular publishing history. From internal evidence the following narrative
can be reconstructed. Volume I, with a title page dated 1831, was completed
in [iii] + 480 pages, but was not originally issued separately. Instead the
School Press went on with the printing of volume II, supplying an undated
title page, and numbering the pages continuously with the first volume.
When page 592 was reached a few copies were published, the two volumes
being bound in one. (Copies of this issue are in the John Crerar Library,
Chicago, the Indiana University Library, and the New York Public Library.)
The printing continued, however, until page 640 was reached, when additional
copies were issued, the two volumes again bound in one. (Copies are in the
University of Illinois Library, the Indiana Historical Society Library, and
the Holliday Collection in the Indiana State Library, the first in original
binding with a presentation inscription by Maclure.) Though page 640 broke
off in the middle of a sentence, no further pages of this edition were
408 INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
lected. They well express the social radicalism that animated
Maclure's work — scientific in its world view, thoroughgoing
in its desire for reform, but confident that drastic change could
come by democratic means, in harmony and peace. "Attrac-
tion," he wrote, "would equally well represent the new social
co-operative system — in its careful cultivation of all the
benevolent and friendly feelings — in its perfect toleration of
all opinions — in its attachment to truth and horror of hypocrisy ;
in its love of justice, and enabling every one to reap the fruits
of his labor — in its mild, placid treatment of all the human
race — in its encouraging of all pleasurable affection — in its
enjoying, in moderation, all the animal appetites that can
conduce to their own or other's happiness — in its living in
peace and good will towards men."12
printed. Instead volume II was entirely reprinted with a new title page dated
1837 and with independently numbered pages [vii] + 556. (Copies of this
are in the Workingmen's Institute, the Indiana State Library, the Wisconsin
Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the Seligman Collection in
the Columbia University Library.) At the same time, apparently, volume I
was reissued separately, with the original title page and pagination, but with
an index added at the end, constituting pages 481-83. (Copies of this issue
are in the Workingmen's Institute, the Indiana State Library, the University
of Illinois Library, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Seligman
Collection in the Columbia University Library.) Finally volume III appeared
with a title page dated 1838, the complete text consisting of [i] + iv + 320
pages. There are no variants among the copies examined in the Indiana
State Library, the Workingmen's Institute, and the Seligman Collection in
the Columbia University Library. A second edition of volume I was pub-
lished at Philadelphia in 1838, but it reprinted only part of the original
volume I and added one essay from volume II, the whole constituting a large
pamphlet of 140 double-columned pages. (Copies in the Wisconsin Historical
Society and the New York Public Library.)
"Volume I, 40.
INDEX
INDEX
Adults, education of, 301, 309, 350-51,
377.
Agricultural and Pastoral Society,
branch of New Harmony Commu-
nity, 333, 343n, 345, 355, 357, 359-
61 ; withdraws children from Edu-
cation Society, 351, 352; takes over
New Harmony tavern, 353, 354;
dissolution, 373.
Agricultural schools, experimental,
307, 331, 362; founded by Maclure
in Spain, 294-95, 300, 305.
Alcott, Bronson, 292.
Allen, William, letter from Robert
Owen, cited, 335n.
American Conchology, by Thomas
Say, published by New Harmony
press, 399n, 407.
Antioch College, 341.
Applegath, Joseph, of New Har-
mony Community, 340, 342, 352,
353, 382.
Ashworth, Mrs. , 375, 395.
"Attractive industry," 379-80.
Bernhard, Karl, Duke of Saxe-
Weimar-Eisenach, visitor at New
Harmony, 330n.
Birkbeck, Dr. George, 403.
Birkbeck, Morris, 360n.
"Boatload of Knowledge," 325, 330n,
345n.
Brisbane, Albert, 379.
Brougham, Henry, 403.
Brown, Paul, visitor and commenta-
tor on New Harmony, 299 ; at Yel-
low Springs Community, 341, 342;
interest in Nevilsville Community,
359, 360;
cited : on music and dancing at
New Harmony, 330; on Owen's
plan to divide the community,
333 ; on New Harmony finances,
335n ; on withdrawal of children
from Education Society, 351 ; on
sale of part of New Harmony
store to Mechanic Society, 353 ;
on complete community of prop-
erty, 355-56 ; on Mme. Fretageot,
364 ; on expulsion of members,
373, 388n ; on buildings of Edu-
cation Society, 377n, 386n.
Campbell, Alexander, debate with
Robert Owen, 400, 402, 404, 405.
Chemistry, at New Harmony, 338,
349.
Cincinnati (Ohio), 371; Maclure
writes from, 338, 354, 356, 358,
359, 364; Owenite projects in, 341,
359; Owen debates with Campbell
in, 400, 402, 405.
Clark, Amos, 382.
Clark & Green, Springfield (Ohio)
publishers, 349.
Columbus (Ohio), 341.
Combe, Abram, founder of Orbiston
Community, 327.
Communism, see Social reform.
"Cut off mile society," 371.
D'Arusmont, Guillaume Sylvan Casi-
mir Phiquepal, see Phiquepal, Wil-
liam S.
Dayton (Ohio), 361.
Declaration of Mental Independence,
by Robert Owen, 344-45, 346-48,
351-52, 386-87.
Disseminator, organ of School of In-
dustry, 297, 299, 399, 407.
Dorsey, James M., 336n, 388n ; en-
couraged to set up schools in op-
position to Maclure's, 395.
Dublin (Ireland), 305.
Edinburgh (Scotland), 312, 313.
Education Society, at New Har-
(411)
412
INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
mony, organized and financed by
Maclure, 333-35, 337-40, 342, 348,
350, 356-58, 365, 367, 371, 374-75,
377; prospectus, 326, 330-31, 349;
buildings, 334-35, 349-50, 352, 377,
383, 386n ; publishing and scientific
research program, 338, 340, 371,
380, 387-88, 398-99, 401-2, 405-8;
instruments and equipment for,
338, 354, 380 ; Owen sets up educa-
tional programs in opposition to,
351-53, 356, 359, 361-65, 367-69,
374, 394-95; conflicts between
teachers in, 352, 362, 363-70, 374-
75, 377, 383-84, 386, 387, 389-91,
395, 401; failure of Maclure's
effort to incorporate, 375 ; see also
School of Industry, Workingmen's
Institute, M. D. Fretageot, Les-
ueur, William Maclure, Neef,
Robert Owen, Phiquepal, Say,
Troost.
Educational ideas : of Owen, 291-92,
303, 307, 312, 314, 315-16, 318, 356,
359, 361-64, 367-68, 371-72, 385,
395; of Pestalozzi and Fellenberg,
292 ; of Maclure, 292-95, 300, 305-
6, 310, 322, 331, 348, 350, 379-80;
of Mme. Fretageot, 312, 314, 315-
16, 352, 367-69, 389-91; of Neef,
294, 338, 352, 368, 387, 389-90; of
Phiquepal, 324n, 337, 349, 352, 357-
58, 377, 383-84, 386, 390-91.
England, see Great Britain.
Essay on Common Wealths, An, 304.
Feiba-Peveli, or New Harmony Com-
munity No. 3, p. 328, 329n, 332,
345n, 397 ; dissolution, 374.
Fellenberg, Philipp Emmanual von,
educational ideas, 292, 300, 403n.
Finances of New Harmony, see
Robert Owen.
Fish of North America, by C. A.
Lesueur, 387, 398-99, 407.
Fisher, Mrs. , 330n.
Fisher, Hannah, wife of William
Price, 330n.
Flower, Richard, 307-8.
Fourier, Charles, 379.
France, prospects of educational and
social reform in, as seen by Ma-
clure, 301-3.
Free Enquirer, The, 399, 405.
Fretageot, Achille, 307, 367, 390.
Fretageot, Marie Duclos, passim;
not to be confused with Madam
F , 330n; becomes acquainted
with Maclure, 294-95, 300; school
in Paris, 294-95, 300, 303; estab-
lishes school in Philadelphia under
Maclure's patronage, 295, 302, 303,
309-10, 312, 314, 317, 322, 324
meets Owen, 311-12, 314, 317-18
urges Maclure to join Owen at
New Harmony, 313-19, 321, 324
arrives at New Harmony, 325
teaches at New Harmony, 331
349-50, 352, 364, 367-68, 369, 370
375, 376, 382-83, 389, 390-91, 398
405 ; oversees New Harmony press
338, 371, 380, 387-88, 401-2, 405
407-8; quarrels with Phiquepal
352-53 ; chided by Maclure for
falling in with Owen's educational
plans, 362, 363-69; manages Ma-
clure's interests in New Harmony
after his departure, 399-400, 402,
405-6 ; leaves New Harmony for
France and Mexico, 406; death,
299, 406.
, Dictionary, 323.
Gardner, —
Geology, Maclure's interest in, 293,
294, 296 ; at New Harmony, 297.
Gray, John, Lecture on Human Hap-
piness, 327.
Great Britain, prospects of educa-
tional and social reform in, as
seen by Maclure, 305-10, 311, 320;
by Owen, 403-4.
Greaves, James Pierrepont, 292.
Griscom, John, of New York, 303.
Haines, Reuben, 349.
Hall, [Samuel?], draws mortgages,
404, 405.
Hildreth, Samuel P., 401.
INDEX
413
Hillbourn, , shoemaker, joins
New Harmony Community, 354.
Hofwyl (Switzerland), 292.
Infant schools, 291, 306-7, 309, 310,
349, 359.
Irving, , 400.
Jalapa (Mexico), 403.
Jennings, Robert L., 329, 400, 401.
Lancastrian system of education, 323,
363.
Lawsuits, involving Owen, 336n,
393-95, 396n; involving Maclure,
393-95.
Lesueur, Charles Alexandre, 313,
390; accompanies Maclure on sci-
entific expeditions, 296; joins New
Harmony experiment, 319, 325;
teaches at New Harmony, 349,
362 ; publication of study of fishes
of North America, 338, 380, 387,
398-99 ; never completed, 407.
London Mechanics' Institute (Birk-
beck Institution), 403n.
Louisville (Ky.), 347, 367,369.
Lowns, Caleb, 342, 385.
Macdonald, Donald, 298.
Maclure, Alexander, brother of Wil-
liam Maclure, 375, 377 .
Maclure, William, passim; birth,
292; scientific work, 292-96; makes
acquaintance of Mrr.e. Fretageot,
294-95, 300; visits Pestalozzi at
Yverdon, 293, 294, 300; sponsors
Pestalozzian schools in America,
294-95, 300, 301, 303, 306, 383;
visits Owen at New Lanark
(1824), 295, 306, 307; returns to
United States (July 1825), 321;
cautions Mme. Fretageot against
excessive enthusiasm, 322 ; decides
to join Owen, 295, 324-25, 331;
arrives at New Harmony (Jan.
1826), 298, 325, 326; plans for
New Harmony schools, 326, 331,
348, 349, 361, 364-65, 367, 369;
proposes division of community by
occupations, 332-33 ; organizes Ed-
ucation Society, 333-34, 375 ; fi-
nancial and legal relationships
at New Harmony, see Robert
Owen ; makes trip to Ohio and
Kentucky (June-Oct. 1826) and
advises Mme. Fretageot during ab-
sence, 298, 336-73; investigates
Yellow Springs Community, 339,
340-41, 342; chides Mme. Freta-
geot for falling in with Owen's
educational plans, 362, 363-69;
effort to incorporate Education
Society fails, 375 ; spends winter
of 1826-27 in New Orleans and ad-
vises Mme. Fretageot during his
absence, 375-89, 391 ; final break
with Owen, 391-95; longest stay
in New Harmony (1827), 299, 398;
organizes School of Industry, 399 ;
organizes Workingmen's Institute,
285, 296, 297, 406 ; resides in Mex-
ico (1828 ff.), 399; meets Owen
there (1829), 400, 403 ; Opinions on
Various Subjects published by
School Press at New Harmony,
407-8 ; death, 406.
Macluria, or New Harmony Com-
munity No. 2, p. 328, 329n, 332;
dissolution, 374.
Macnab, Henry Grey, Neiv Views,
303, 304.
Marietta (Ohio), 401.
Marriage, Owen's views on, 344-45,
348-49, 355.
Mechanic Society, branch of New
Harmony Community, 333, 343n,
359-61 ; withdraws children from
Education Society, 351, 352; takes
over part of New Harmony store,
353, 354; dissolution, 371n, 373.
Mechanics' institutions, 309, 310, 403.
Memphis (Tenn.), 378.
Mexico, Maclure sojourns in, 399,
400, 403 ; Owen visits with plan
for founding communities in, 400,
402, 403, 405.
414
INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Mexico City (Mexico), 406.
Miami Canal, 361.
Michaux, Frangois Andre, Sylva,
published by New Harmony press,
323, 401, 405, 407.
Mineralogy, Maclure's interest in,
293 ; at New Harmony, 338-39, 349,
390.
Mount Vernon (Ind.), 337, 357, 375,
378, 389.
Nashoba (Tenn.), 378, 400.
Natural philosophy, see Science.
Neef, Joseph, Sketch of a Plan and
Method of Education, 294, 338;
sets up school in Philadelphia
under Maclure's patronage, 294,
300; joins New Harmony Com-
munity, 295 ; teacher at New Har-
mony, 349, 359, 361, 363, 364, 366,
385, 387, 389; opposes separate
education community, 329n ; criti-
cized by Mme. Fretageot, 352, 389-
90, 391 ; defended and supported
by Maclure, 362, 368, 387, 389 ; on
Owen's attempt to question prop-
erty belonging to Education So-
ciety, 381 ; witness to deed, 382 ;
replies to Owen's address attack-
ing Maclure, 394.
Nevilsville (Ohio), proposed Owen-
ite Community, 341 n, 359, 360.
New Harmony Community, passim;
successive reorganizations : Pre-
liminary Society established
(April-May 1825), 326, 327, 350,
354 ; reorganized as Community
of Equality (Feb. 1826), 326,
327 ; first schisms, 326, 328-29 ;
Communities Nos. 2 and 3 or-
ganized separately, see Macluria,
Feiba-Peveli ; second reorgani-
zation, with "nucleus" of 24
(March 1826), 328, 329-30;
third reorganization, on basis of
occupations (May 1826), 331-34,
see also Agricultural and Pas-
toral Society, Education Society,
Mechanic Society; fourth reor-
ganization as a "trust" (Sept-
Oct. 1826), 373, 396; fifth re-
organization, involving leases to
small communities and weeding
out of "undesirables" (Jan.-Feb.
1827), 388, 391, 396; Community
No. 4, part of this reorganiza-
tion, a swindle, 396; failure ad-
mitted by New-Harmony Gazette
(March 1827), but not by Owen,
396-97;
members of, criticized by Maclure,
337, 343, 346, 350, 354, 370, 377,
378, 380, 385 ; finances of, see
Robert Owen; schools at, see Edu-
cation Society, School of Industry,
Workingmen's Institute ; principles
of, see Educational ideas, Social
reform.
New-Harmony Gazette, 299, 407;
contents criticized by Maclure,
355;
cited : on reorganizations of New
Harmony Community, 326-28,
332-33, 343n, 396; on conflicting
educational plans of Maclure and
Owen, 326, 356, 362-63, 374n,
380-81, 392-95, 398n; on pro-
posals for community of prop-
erty at New Harmony, 355-56 ;
on failure of experiment, 396 ;
refuses to publish protest of Edu-
cation Society, 381 ; transferred to
New York as Free Enquirer, 297,
399.
New Lanark (Scotland), 292, 303,
304, 309, 311, 314, 359, 362, 371,
385, 402, 404; Maclure visits, 306,
307.
New Orleans (La.), 375, 399; Ma-
clure writes from, 378, 379, 381,
386.
New System of Society, Two dis-
courses on a, by Robert Owen, 317.
New View of Society, A, by Robert
Owen, 291.
INDEX
415
New York City (N. Y.), 304, 311,
321, 322; Robert Dale Owen and
others transfer activities to, 404.
New York High School for Boys,
303.
New York Society for Promoting
Communities, 304.
Opinions on Various Subjects, by
William Maclure, 285n, 398n, 407-
8.
Orbiston Community, near Glasgow,
327.
Orphans, education of, 351, 362, 365,
398.
Owen, David Dale, 297, 336.
Owen, Richard, 336n, 396n.
Owen, Robert, passim; earliest men-
tion in Maclure-Fretageot corre-
spondence, 304 ; visited by Maclure
at New Lanark, 295, 306, 307 ; first
trip to United States, 308-11, 322;
meets Mme. Fretageot, 311-12, 314,
317-18, 325; founds New Harmony
Community and carries through
successive reorganizations, see
New Harmony Community ; propa-
ganda in America in 1824-25, pp.
313, 315-17, 327; writes Maclure
from Philadalphia, 317; confers
with Maclure, 322-23, 325; sails
for England, 322, 324; returns to
United States, 324-27; reaches
New Harmony for longest stay,
327; investment at New Harmony
and financial relations with Ma-
clure, 334-40, 342, 346, 348, 350,
356-58, 365, 376-77, 380-85, 391-
94, 402, 405; delivers "Oration
Containing a Declaration of Men-
tal Independence," 344-48, 351-52,
386-87 ; sets up educational pro-
gram in opposition to Maclure's,
351-53, 356, 359, 361-65, 367-69,
374, 394-95; transfers store and
tavern to subordinate communities,
353, 354, 358-59, 361; breaks fin-
ally with Maclure, 391-95; leaves
New Harmony without admitting
failure, 396-97 ; debates on religion,
400, 402, 404, 405; projects com-
munities in Mexico, 400, 402, 403,
405 ; sees Maclure there, 400, 403 ;
revisits New Harmony, 400, 405 ;
sells property at New Lanark, 404 ;
plans of, praised : by Mme. Freta-
geot, 304, 312, 314, 316, 318-19,
321 ; by Maclure, 307, 309, 312-
13, 320, 322-23; by Phiquepal,
319; criticized by Maclure, 322,
344, 346-48, 358, 359, 361-62,
368, 370-72, 382, 387, 388, 389.
administrative and financial man-
agement of, at New Harmony,
criticized by Maclure, 336-40, 342-
44, 346, 354, 356-61, 365-67, 369,
371, 375-78, 383, 385, 388-95;
see also Educational ideas, Social
reform, New Harmony Commu-
nity, New Lanark.
Owen, Robert Dale, 377, 404 ; moves
to form an educational community,
329; on father's expenditure at
New Harmony, 336n ; and New
Harmony schools, 340, 351, 352,
359, 362, 363, 368, 369, witness to
deed, 382; praised by Mme. Freta-
geot, 391 ; advised by Mme. Freta-
geot, 401 ; acts as business agent
for father, 404 ; goes to New York,
404-5.
Owen, William, 336n, 377; diary,
298; moves to form educational
community, 329.
Paris (France), 303, 307, 310, 312,
320, 386, 406; Maclure supports
educational experiments in, 294-95,
300, 301, 302.
Pastoral Society, see Agricultural
and Pastoral Society.
Pears, Sarah, 298.
Pears, Thomas, 298, 329n.
Pelham, William, 298.
Pelham, William Creese, 354.
Periodicals for disseminating useful
knowledge, 309, 310.
Pestalozzi, Heinrich, educational
416
INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
ideas, 292, 295, 301 ; Maclure's in-
terest in, 293, 294, 300-1, 302, 323,
324n, 367, 368, 383, 389.
Philadelphia (Pa.), 383, 404; seat of
Maclure's mercantile business, 292 ;
Neef establishes school in, 294,
300; Mme. Fretageot establishes
school in, 303; Phiquepal brings
school to, 313; Owen in, 311-12,
317-18, 325; Maclure in, 324-25;
Owen speaks in, 394-95.
Philadelphia Academy of Natural
Sciences, interest of members in
community system, 305, 313; Ma-
clure president of, 296.
Philadelphia Aurora, 305.
Philadelphia National Gazette, 347-
48, 386-87.
Philadelphia United States Gazette,
348.
"Philanthropist," keelboat, 325.
Phiquepal, William S. (Guillaume
Sylvan Casimir Phiquepal d'Arus-
mont), marries Frances Wright,
295n ; school in Paris, 294-95, 300 ;
becomes acquainted with Maclure,
295, 300-2 ; moves school to Phila-
delphia under Maclure's patronage,
295, 306, 313-15, 317, 321, 324;
meets Owen, 314-17, 319; joins
New Harmony experiment, 295,
325; teaches at New Harmony,
325-26, 337-39, 349, 352, 357-58,
369, 374, 377, 383-84, 386-87, 390,
401 ; criticized by Maclure, 337-39,
349, 357-58, 377, 383-84, 386-87,
389; criticized and defended by
Mme. Fretageot, 352-3, 390, 391,
401.
Prairies, community on the, 345, 352,
359-60, 371.
Preliminary Society, see New Har-
mony Community.
Price, Dr. Philip M., 330n; aids
Mme. Fretageot in establishing
school, 303 ; becomes interested in
Owen's experiment, 303, 304, 310,
311, 314, 325.
Price, William, marries Hannah
Fisher, 330n.
Printing and publishing at New Har-
mony, 285, 295-96, 323n, 338, 340,
371, 380, 387-88, 398-99, 401-2,
405, 407-8.
Property, private, Owen's views on,
344-45 ; Paul Brown's views on,
341n, 355-56, 360.
Purdon, James, lawsuit with Owen,
336n.
Rapp, Frederick, 391.
Rapp, George, 335, 340, 342, 385, 404,
406.
Rappites, Owen purchases New Har-
mony from, 307-8, 391-94.
Religion, organized: criticized by
Maclure, 301, 302, 307, 309, 312,
322; by Mme. Fretageot, 304,
404; by Owen, 318, 344-45, 400,
404, 405 ;
differences over, at New Har-
mony, 328; effect upon public
opinion of Owen's statements con-
cerning, 347-48; debate between
Owen and Campbell on, 400, 402,
404, 405.
Research, scientific, at New Har-
mony, 285, 295-97, 313, 338, 390.
Robertson, , 309.
Roe, , 360.
Say, Thomas, 305 ; accompanies Ma-
clure on scientific expeditions, 296;
joins New Harmony Community,
313, 315, 318, 319, 325; American
Conchology published at New Har-
mony, 338, 399n, 407 ; at New Har-
mony, 340, 359, 367, 373, 377, 390 ;
marriage to Lucy Sistaire, 348,
391n ; teaches zoology, 349 ; cabi-
net of specimens, 380, 387; acts
as agent for Maclure, 393 ; carries
on Maclure's work in New Har-
mony, 399; death, 407.
Schmid, Joseph, 301.
School of Industry, at New Har-
mony, 295-96, 297, 398, 406; see
INDEX
417
also Education Society, Working-
men's Institute.
School Society, see Education So-
ciety.
Science, Maclure's interest in, 293,
294-96; at New Harmony, 285,
295-97, 313, 338, 349, 371, 390,
406-8 ; Phiquepal's aversion to, 338,
383-84 ; Mme. Fretageot on, 390.
Sectarian schools, 309.
Sexual morality at New Harmony,
348-49, 355, 359, 385.
Silliman, Benjamin, editor of Ameri-
can Journal of Science and Arts,
296,324;
letters from Maclure : on educa-
tion, 293-94; on Owen's project-
ed New Harmony experiment,
308, 320; on Michaux' Syl'va,
323n ; on plan for New Harmony
schools, 330-31; on "attractive
industry," 379-80.
Sistaire, Mrs. Joseph, 348.
Sistaire, Lucy, wife of Thomas Say,
348, 391n.
Slavery, 389, 399.
Social reform, Owen's ideas on, 291,
303, 304-5, 307, 309, 318; Maclure's
ideas on, 294, 301, 308, 310, 346-47,
403-4, 408; Paul Brown's ideas on,
355-56.
Society for Promoting Communities,
of New York, 304.
Spain, Maclure's effort to establish
school in, 294-95, 300, 305; reac-
tionary regime in, 305.
Speakman, John, 313, 315, 318, 325.
Speculation, Maclure warns against,
310, 323, 349, 361.
Springfield (Ohio), 359; Maclure
writes from, 342, 344, 345, 348.
Store, at New Harmony, 350, 353,
354, 358-59, 361, 376.
Sylva, by Francois Andre Michaux,
323, 405, 407.
Tavern, at New Harmony, 353, 354,
358-59, 361.
Taylor, William G., 396.
Texas territory, to be scene of Owen-
ite experiment, 402, 403.
Tiebout, Cornelius, printer and en-
graver at New Harmony, 371, 388,
401-2, 405.
Troost, Dr. Gerard, 317, 318; joins
New Harmony experiment, 296,
313, 315 ; at New Harmony, 338,
339, 345n, 346, 349, 390.
Two Discourses on a New System of
Society, by Robert Owen, 317.
United States, prospects of educa-
tional and social reform in, as
seen by Maclure, 301, 302, 308,
309, 320, 323 ; by Mme. Fretageot,
304; by Owen, 309, 312, 314, 404.
Ward, Allen, 404.
Washington (D. C), Owen seeks
support for community in, 314, 315,
316, 317.
Washington National Intelligencer,
348.
Whitwell, Stedman, 345-46, 350.
Women, position of, 306-7.
Wood, Samuel, 324.
Workingmen's Institute, 296; found-
ed by Maclure, 285, 297, 406 ; Ma-
clure-Fretageot correspondence,
collection of, 285, 287, 297-99, 300.
Wright, Frances, 337, 369, 372 ; mar-
riage, 295n; Nashoba Community,
378, 400; Mme. Fretageot advises,
401 ; Owen settles finances with,
402, 404.
Wright, Pamela, 400.
Xenia (Ohio), 341.
Yellow Springs (Ohio) Community,
339, 340-41, 342, 359, 360.
Yverdon (Switzerland), Pestalozzi's
school in, 292; Maclure visits, 293,
300-1, 302.
Zanesville (Ohio), 354.
Zoology, at New Harmony, 349;
see also Lesueur, Say.
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